This time last year, Leeds United were already nine points adrift of the Championship’s top two.
Leicester City and Ipswich Town had both started like a house on fire, dropping just eight points between them in their opening nine matches.
Leeds, meanwhile, had only just started picking up form after a summer of chaos, accumulating just 13 points, which had them sat all the way down in ninth place.
Fast forward to now and Leeds are considerably more in the picture. Though the Whites are only three points better off than 12 months ago, no team has been able to replicate the sort of form either Leicester or Ipswich showed in the early parts of last season.
However, this time around, just five points separate first place Sunderland and ninth place Middlesbrough, showing just how tight the league has been early on.
Bamford makes Championship promotion race prediction
Without Crysencio Summerville, Archie Gray and Georginio Rutter, Leeds were always going to find this season more difficult.
However, Patrick Bamford is of the opinion Leeds have replaced them well, and given the fact they have only been beaten once, it would be hard to disagree.
But for some poor finishing against Portsmouth, Manor Solomon’s slip in defeat to Burnley, and Illan Meslier’s huge error at Sunderland, Leeds could so easily be on more than 16 points.
In fact, Leeds would be top right now if those draws with Portsmouth and Sunderland had been converted into wins like they should’ve done.
Despite that, speaking on the latest episode of the BBC’s 72+ Podcast, Bamford actually thinks Leeds could find it more difficult to be promoted this season compared to last, due to the amount of teams who look like they could push for the top two.
He said: “I think it’s going to be another close league again. If anything, this year could even be a bit harder than last year because there’s probably five or six teams who could go for the top two positions. Hopefully we are one of them.”
Bamford verdict on Leeds signings
As mentioned, Bamford believes Leeds have actually replaced the key players they lost over the summer well.
The likes of Largie Ramazani, Ao Tanaka and Jayden Bogle have all made solid impacts so far, even if a couple of them had to be patient for their opportunity.
He said: “We went down the play-off route and lost in the final, which kind of, at the time was a strange one. We knew next year, being this year, we have another great chance to do it again, but we also knew at that point it was more than likely we were going to lose a lot of our best players.
“Starting the season was a little bit uncertain, probably not as much as the season before, but still a little bit with who was going to be here and who wasn’t. The squad got sorted out pretty early on and the players that we lost, we replaced. I think we’ve actually brought in some really good players.”
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