Norwich vs Leeds Prediction | Opta Analyst

The 2023-24 Championship play-offs begin at Carrow Road on Sunday. We look at the former with our Norwich vs Leeds prediction and preview.

Norwich vs Leeds stats: the quick shots

• Supercomputer Opta rates Leeds as the most likely Championship play-off winners (33.2%) and favorites for this fixture at Carrow Road (44.0%).
• Leeds have never won promotion via the Football League play-offs in five previous appearances.
• Norwich have lost their last four meetings with Leeds, last beating them in February 2019.

Match preview

Daniel Farke will take his current Leeds side back to former club Norwich City on Sunday afternoon, hoping for a positive result back at Elland Road for the second leg of this 2023-24 Championship play-off semi-final.

Farke is one of the most successful managers in Norwich’s history, having won promotion from the Championship twice, both as title winners in 2019 and 2021. He is the only manager to win two league titles at the club.

His Leeds United side have been unlucky not to gain automatic promotion from the Championship this season, with their poor run of form at the end of the season – one win and four defeats in their last six games – coupled with outstanding campaigns by Leicester City and Ipswich Town. limiting them to a third place.

The last team to earn up to 90 points in a Championship season and finish outside the automatic promotion places was Sunderland in 1997-98 (also 90 points). They eventually lost in that season’s play-off final to Charlton Athletic in a penalty shoot-out.

After relegation from the Premier League last season, Leeds have refreshed their squad for 2023-24 and have the second-youngest XI in the competition this term (24 years, 147 days). Four of the five players who have played the most league minutes for them in 2023-24 are still under 24: Ethan Ampadu (23), Georginio Rutter (22), Archie Gray (18) and Crysencio Summerville ( 22).

Of the teams in the Championship play-offs this season, Norwich have spent the fewest days in the top six (102), but their form in the second half of the campaign saw them move ahead of Hull City.

Like Leeds, Norwich’s end-of-season form has been spotty, with just one win in their last five games and a final-day defeat at relegated Birmingham City.

Many of those sneaking into the play-offs were down to their good form at Carrow Road, with only Ipswich (54), Leeds (53) and Leicester (52) taking more points at home than them (49), with 67% of their total points coming in home games. They go into this clash on a 15-match home unbeaten run in league competition (W11 D4), having not lost a league game at Carrow Road since November 5 against Blackburn.

David Wagner’s Norfolk job is under threat before their form changes in 2024 and will be looking to win promotion to the Premier League for a second time after leading Huddersfield Town to play-off success against Reading in 2017.

Norwich – Leeds Head-to-Head

In what is their first EFL play-off meeting, Norwich City will be looking to beat Leeds United for the first time since February 2019 when they won 3-1 at Elland Road under current Leeds boss Farke.

Since then, Leeds have won each of their last four meetings in all competitions. The two clubs last met on January 24 at Elland Road, with Leeds winning 1-0 thanks to Patrick Bamford’s 16th-minute strike.

The meeting at Carrow Road earlier in the season was much more entertaining, with Leeds coming from 2-0 down with 27 minutes remaining to win 3-2. Shane Duffy scored the opener on four minutes before Brazil’s Gabriel Sara added a second just before the break. Duffy scored an own goal before Summerville scored twice in the last 13 minutes to secure all three points.

That home defeat saw Norwich drop three of their league-high 29 points dropped from winning positions in the 2023-24 Championship.

Players to watch

Norwich: Josh Sargent

Much of Norwich’s turnaround in form can be linked to Sargent’s return from injury in their final league game of 2023 after a four-month layoff. He scored in three of his four league appearances before picking up injury and then bounced back to score a further 13 goals in 22 games.

The American international striker has scored in nine consecutive home league appearances, becoming only the second player to achieve the feat in the league’s history, after Chuba Akpom for Middlesbrough in 2023.

Of the 30 players who have scored at least 10 goals in the league this season, Sargent had the third best shot conversion rate (23.9%) and the second best minutes-per -goal (116) behind only Jamie Vardy (98).

Leeds: Crysencio Summerville

Summerville finished the Championship season as Leeds’ top scorer with 19 goals – only Adam Armstrong (21) and Sammie Szmodics (27) scored more in the entire league.

With nine assists, the Dutchman was involved in 28 of Leeds’ goals, while he was one of five players in the division to tally over 100 chances created for team-mates (112). His expected assist total (xA) of 12.5 was also third best in the league, behind Sorba Thomas (13.3) and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall (12.6) but ahead of the main Norwich creator Sara (11.9) in fourth place.

His partnership with Rutter on the pitch makes them one of the most dangerous pairings in the league. No two players have created more open-play chances (55) for each other than Rutter and Summerville.

Octa Power Rankings

The Opta Power Rankings is a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale of zero to 100, where zero is the worst ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team from the world.

Before this weekend kicks off, here are the Opta Power Rankings for both sides.

Norwich vs Leeds Prediction

Leeds are predicted to win this match by Opta Supercomputer, with the Yorkshire club beating Norwich in 44.0% of the 10,000 pre-match simulations. They are also favorites to win the Championship play-offs overall, with the supercomputer projecting them to win promotion back to the Premier League in 33.2% of sims.

Norwich will be hoping for a positive result at Elland Road on May 16, with a win in the Canaries projected 29.9% of the time by the supercomputer. Of the four Championship play-off semi-finalists, Norwich have reached the final at Wembley the least often in simulations (41.2%).

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