The stat that best highlights how impressive Leeds’ defence has been this season

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Leeds United are flying high in the Championship, and their defence has been a key reason for their success.

With the international break in full swing, Thomas Christiansen will probably be taking stock of Leeds’ impressive start to the season and thinking about what he needs to work on to ensure that the Whites maintain the momentum that they have built up during the first five games of the campaign.

While the exciting football going forward has left Leeds fans with plenty to talk about, the performance of the defence arguably deserves as much praise, and one statistic in particular highlights just how much praise the likes of Luke Ayling, Liam Cooper, Pontus Jansson and Vurnon Anita deserve.

As the table suggests, of the goalkeepers to have played all five games in the Championship this term, no goalkeeper has made fewer saves than Felix Wiedwald.

And when you consider that Leeds have conceded just two times in the league this season – the joint-second best defensive record in the division – it is difficult to imagine that Christiansen will have many complaints regarding how well the defence, as well as the two holding midfielders, have done.

The statistic certainly explains why the fans have still largely been unable to form an opinion on summer signing Wiedwald despite the fact that he has played every minute in the league this season.

The German has had so little to do with Ayling and Jansson maintaining the form that made them so crucial last term, while Cooper has shone in a way that supporters have not really seen since his arrival in 2014.

The likes of Anita, Cameron Borthwick-Jackson and Conor Shaughnessy have also played their part.

And it seems unlikely that Leeds fans will have any problem going through the entire campaign not being able to form a full opinion on Wiedwald’s quality if it is because the defence continue to keep the opposition largely at bay.