Leeds United 'first mover advantage' revealed in fixture battle with Ipswich Town but 'tipping point' feared — YEP 25/4/24

Leeds United are expected to have a slight psychological advantage over promotion rivals Ipswich Town heading into the final week of the season, but only if they win on Friday night at Queens Park Rangers.

By Joe Donnohue

Drawing on wisdom and research into penalty shootouts, Leeds could certainly benefit from the EFL's scheduling of theirs and Ipswich's remaining fixtures as it looks increasingly likely to be between those two sides for who takes second place and automatic promotion to the Premier League.

It follows Leicester City's eventual five-goal drubbing of fourth place Southampton on Tuesday evening, 24 hours on from Leeds' own return to winning ways with a 4-3 triumph at the Riverside Stadium. The Foxes moved onto 94 points, four clear of second place Leeds and no matter what will enter the final weekend of the campaign ahead of Daniel Farke's men. There is no such guarantee with Ipswich though, as the Suffolk club play twice before the lunchtime kick-offs on May 4 - albeit against difficult opponents in Hull City and Coventry City.

Crucially, Leeds' next game comes before Ipswich's and could lead to something called the 'first mover advantage' coming into play.

“There is a psychological advantage to going first,” sports psychologist Marc Sagal explained in an interview with The Athletic earlier this month. “In my experience, and the research bears this out, better performances are more likely to result when a challenge is viewed more as an opportunity to accomplish something than a chance to mess up.

“When a team has what’s often called the ‘first mover advantage’, they have the opportunity, usually through winning, by placing additional pressure on their competition. This increases the likelihood that their competition mindset will be overly focused on keeping pace or not screwing up, which can negatively impact performance."

A Leeds win at QPR would move them four points clear of Ipswich and put the onus on Kieran McKenna's side to win both fixtures against Coventry and Hull to leapfrog Leeds once again, due to their inferior goal difference. Fail to win in West London and the psychological advantage may shift to Portman Road, though.

“There is also the chance that the team playing first will lose, and therefore create more of an opportunistic mindset for the team playing after. Research and current wisdom around penalty-kick order reinforces this point. Generally speaking, teams prefer to take the first kick to apply additional pressure on the opposing team and while the exact statistical influence may be marginal, the psychological preference to go first is very common.”

Farke has tried to keep his players on an even keel throughout the season, reinforcing the belief that his squad should not be too high following a win, or too low after defeat. At such a high-pressure juncture of the campaign, doing so is either said than done with Farke even admitting after Leeds' seven-goal thriller on Monday night that his players had been feeling the nerves that come with what they hope to achieve.

“I tend to look at pressure as a useful thing for athletes up to the point where it becomes too much,” Sagal added. “Where this tipping point begins varies dramatically from player to player."

Farke's task is to identify who among his squad has the requisite experience or wherewithal to handle the pressure and turn up the heat on Ipswich with a second consecutive win on Friday night.