One of the biggest games of the Championship season will kick-off at Turf Moor on Monday night, live on Sky Sports.
Burnley and Leeds were among the favourites to win promotion back to the Premier League before a ball was kicked this season and both have lived up to that billing.
Daniel Farke’s Leeds currently lead the Championship with 59 points, one point ahead of second-placed Sheffield Utd and three ahead of Monday’s opposition, Burnley.
Burnley have won six points fewer than at the same stage of their last Championship season in 2022/23 when they were promoted as champions with 101 points.
While they may be disappointed at this stage to not occupy one of the two automatic promotions spots, this campaign has so far been a successful one at that is mostly down to their defence.
Highlights of the Sky Bet Championship match between Leeds United and Norwich City
The Clarets have conceded just nine goals in their 28 league games this season – the joint-fewest ever by any team at this stage of an English Football League season. The only team to match this feat was Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea side of 2004-05, who went on to win the Premier League title, conceding a joint-English League record-low 15 goals.
If Burnley continue conceding goals at this sparse rate of 0.32 per game, they would concede between 14 or 15 goals by the end of the season so could potentially beat that record set by Mourinho’s Chelsea in 2004-05 and Preston way back in the first ever league season in 1888-89.
Those were both set in seasons with less than 46 games. The lowest number of goals conceded in a 46-game season was 20 by Gillingham in Division 3 in 1995-96. To beat that record Scott Parker’s team have to concede less than 11 goals over their remaining 18 fixtures.
Burnley’s defence has clearly not been giving away anything this season, having not made an error leading to a single goal as of yet.
Burnley’s defensive numbers are made more impressive given they do let the opposition have chances. Parker’s team have faced 264 shots in the League this season – 24 teams have faced fewer in the top 4 tiers in 2024/25 with Leeds, interestingly, facing the fewest (180).
Highlights of the Sky Bet Championship match between Plymouth and Burnley
However, 61 of the 70 shots on target Burnley have faced this season have been saved, giving the Clarets the best save ratio in the top 4 tiers in 2024-25 (87.1 per cent).
Unsurprisingly, Burnley come out on top across the top four tiers in English football for a number of defensive metrics with more clean sheets (19) and a better xG against (-14.48) than any other side.
Comparing Burnley’s defensive numbers to teams in Europe’s major Leagues, the Clarets achievements still stand up. Atletico Madrid have conceded the fewest goals across the major Leagues this season with 14 in 21 matches – five goals more than Burnley in seven fewer games.
Up against the country’s best defence on Monday night is statistically its best attack.
Whilst the stats above do show Leeds have performed well defensively this season, it is in attack where they have really shone.
Daniel Farke’s side have scored 53 goals this season – the most by any team in England’s top four tiers and six more than any other Championship team.
Ahead of this weekend’s action, Leeds have also had the more shots (463) and shots on target (160) than any other team in senior English League football.
Again comparing from Europe’s major leagues, only Bayern Munich (58) have scored more League goals this season than Leeds.
And Leeds have had more shot and shots on target than any team from those Leagues this season.
When Leeds last won promotion from the Championship as title winners in 2019/20, Marcelo Bielsa’s team had seven points fewer at this stage than Farke’s side this season and had also scored 10 goals fewer.
Everything bodes well for Leeds’ efforts to gain promotion back to the Premier League after two seasons in the second tier. But if they are to increase the three-point gap on Burnley on Monday night, they will have to find a way to breach a defence only nine teams have managed to find a way past this season.
