Looking Back at the leeds united vs burnley f.c. timeline; Which Team Has Dominated？

Man, I was bored stiff last weekend. Absolutely nothing on TV. I was talking trash with my buddy, Pete, about that terrible 0-0 draw between Leeds United and Burnley back in 2021. You know the one, total slog. Pete is a massive Burnley fan, and he kept arguing that while the scoreboard said zero, Burnley had controlled the whole damn thing. I told him he was seeing things. That got me thinking: how do you really measure dominance in a football match beyond just shots and possession? You need the timeline.

The Messy Start: Grabbing the Data

I decided to stop talking and start proving. I didn’t want to mess with fancy Python scripts or buying some commercial API access. Too much hassle. I just opened three different major sports stats sites that cover the Premier League and navigated to the historical match report for that specific game. I focused only on the ‘Match Events’ section.

I started by manually copying everything that happened minute-by-minute into a simple Google Sheet. I mean, everything: substitutions, fouls, yellow cards, corners, shots on or off target, even throwing in the ball going out for a long period—just trying to capture the pulse of the match. It was a complete manual brute force job. Took forever.

The first hurdle I hit was the time stamps. One site used 45+2′. Another just labeled it 47′. I spent a solid thirty minutes just standardizing all the timings. I assigned every event a chronological minute number, from 1 to 98 (since there was a lot of stoppage time in that second half).

Defining Dominance: My Own Rubric

Once I had the raw timeline, just a big list of about 150 events, I had to figure out how to weigh them. A throw-in isn’t the same as a shot hitting the crossbar. I developed this super simple scoring system—not professional, just something I cooked up that felt right:

• Minor Event (1 Point): Fouls conceded in the middle third, throw-ins, clearances, substitutions, offsides. This just showed a bit of control or disruption.
• Pressure Event (3 Points): Corners, free kicks awarded in the final third, successful passes into the box, yellow cards (as they often stop a dangerous attack). This indicated intent.
• High-Value Event (5 Points): Shots on target, shots hitting the woodwork, goal-line blocks, missed big chances. This is the stuff that should result in a goal.

I went down the list, row by row, assigning points to every single event I had copied over. Then, I created two new columns: ‘Leeds Points’ and ‘Burnley Points’. I tallied them all up. Total points didn’t really tell the story, though. That would just confirm the possession stats we already knew.

Breaking Down the Timeline

To really see who dominated, I decided to slice the game into chunks. You know, like how commentators always talk about how a team “came out strong in the first 15 minutes” or “dominated the last half-hour.”

I divided the 90 minutes (plus stoppage time) into six clear segments:

• Segment 1: Minutes 1 – 15
• Segment 2: Minutes 16 – 30
• Segment 3: Minutes 31 – 45 (plus first-half stoppage)
• Segment 4: Minutes 46 – 60
• Segment 5: Minutes 61 – 75
• Segment 6: Minutes 76 – End (plus second-half stoppage)

Then, I filtered the spreadsheet by segment and totaled the points for Leeds and Burnley for each time chunk. The team with the most points in a segment earned that segment. The winner would be the team that won four or more segments.

The Unfiltered Results and the Final Verdict

The results were actually pretty interesting, and it instantly shut up Pete (for a minute, anyway).

Segment 1 (1–15 min): Leeds Domination. They racked up points early, pressing high and earning two high-value shots. Leeds was clearly trying to kill the game early. (Leeds 18 points, Burnley 7 points).

Segment 2 (16–30 min): Burnley Control. Burnley settled down and turned the game into a midfield battle. Lots of fouls and clearances. They outscored Leeds mostly through pressure events (corners and free kicks). (Leeds 12 points, Burnley 15 points).

Segment 3 (31–45 min): Leeds Edge. Leeds pushed again before halftime, earning a couple of dangerous free kicks. Burnley was fouling a lot just to break up the play. (Leeds 14 points, Burnley 11 points).

Segment 4 (46–60 min): Burnley Total Shutdown. This was the lowest-scoring segment. Burnley killed the flow completely. They forced Leeds to concede multiple throw-ins deep in their own half. This is where Pete claimed dominance, and my numbers backed him up. (Leeds 5 points, Burnley 10 points).

Segment 5 (61–75 min): Burnley Defensive Masterclass. Leeds had the ball, but Burnley earned high points through blocks and crucial clearances near the box. They were just soaking it all up. (Leeds 10 points, Burnley 13 points).

Segment 6 (76–End): Leeds Desperation. Full throttle from Leeds. They threw everything forward, earning the only high-value shot of the half late on. (Leeds 20 points, Burnley 10 points).

So, the final count of dominated segments was 3-3. A draw. My timeline proved that while Leeds had the dominant aesthetic moments (the beginning and the end, where the big chances happened), Burnley dominated the messy middle 45 minutes of the game, exactly where they wanted it to be—a low-event, physical scrap. It wasn’t Leeds dominating and Burnley defending; it was both teams winning the game on their own terms at different times. I sent the spreadsheet to Pete and told him we were both right, and we were both losers for spending this much time on a 0-0 draw two years ago.

That’s how I waste my weekends. But hey, now I know how to break down dominance without relying on the talking heads.