Going Full Bielsa: The Stats Behind Stats Corner

Football makes headlines for a number of reasons - entertaining matches, injuries, transfers, sackings and so much more - but rarely for statistical analysis. To his credit though, Leeds United boss Marcelo Bielsa well and truly bucked that trend this week with a gobsmacking presentation to the media in which he laid bare his data-heavy research on Derby County, the other side involved in what's now known as 'SpyGate'.

In that presentation - done using the full might of PowerPoint - Bielsa showed off the hours of meticulous research that his staff conduct on the opposition; how often formations are deployed, where players line up most of the time, and so on. All in all, it was a eye-opening peek behind the curtain of match preparations.

With that in mind, I'm tempted to hand Tom Harrow-Smith the honorary title of The Tilehurst End's Very Own Marcelo Bielsa. For those of you who don't know, Tom writes a Stats Corner column for us each week - it's fantastic, you should check out the full set here - and, naturally, it takes plenty of research.

For this week's topic, a look back at how well current Championship sides fare when playing at Derby County, he went above and beyond. No quick five-minute job, he trawled through the record books to find 23 clubs' previous 10 results at Pride Park. I'll let you do the maths but, in short, it took him a while.

It's only fair that, if he's to live up to his Bielsa-inspired title, we allow him to show his working. Luckily he put it all into a massive table - so large in fact that we had trouble putting on the website. Below is his masterpiece (albeit split into seven images). Enjoy.

Tom Harrow-Smith

Tom Harrow-Smith

Tom Harrow-Smith

Tom Harrow-Smith

Tom Harrow-Smith

Tom Harrow-Smith

Tom Harrow-Smith

Tom Harrow-Smith

Tom Harrow-Smith