Wayne Rooney’s Plymouth record unwanted piece of history in Leeds loss | Football

Plymouth Argyle failed to attempt a single shot during their 3-0 defeat to Leeds United on Saturday, becoming just the second team do so in a Championship game in over a decade.

Wayne Rooney’s side had an extremely difficult afternoon at Elland Road as Dan James, Joel Piroe and Brenden Aaronson scored for the home side.

The three goals came in a seven minute spell in the first half but Leeds dominated the whole game.

The statistics are pretty grim reading for Rooney’s team, with Leeds ending the match with 78.5 per cent possession.

Daniel Farke’s team produced 23 shots, which was 23 more than the away team managed.

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Opta report that Plymouth became just the second side since 2013-14 not to attempt a single shot during a Championship match.

Rooney told the BBC after the game: ‘I think the result was probably the right result.

‘We knew coming here today was going to be a very difficult game, over the last few weeks we’ve picked up some key injuries in key positions for us, so we knew today was going to be very difficult.

‘We tried to come and be resilient and not open up too much – we knew we’d have to defend the box a lot and I thought we did that well up until their first goal.

‘Then it’s a crazy seven minutes where we concede three and the game’s done, so very disappointed with the result and we have to move on from this game very quickly.’

The loss leaves the Pilgrims in the relegation zone, sitting 22nd in the Championship, although they are only in the drop zone on goal different, level on points with struggling Luton Town in 21st.

Leeds are having a much better time of it, looking good in second position, three points behind league-leaders Sunderland.

Farke was revelling in his side’s dominance, saying: ‘I’m not sure if I was ever involved in a game at this level with such statistics – I think there were nine shots goal and their expected goals was 0.0 and 0 corners for them.

‘Yes we were in total control of the game, this was what I love when you are so dominant and have a really complex performance.

‘We needed 10 or 15 minutes to find our tactical positioning between the lines and our offensive roles behind the striker in order to create a few more gaps and chances against a back six in front of them.

‘Afterwards we were all over them, created many good situations, scored three really good goals and could have done a bit more second half.’

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