Leeds United are the EFL’s biggest attraction, make no mistake. They drive the biggest television audiences. You only have to listen to the messages Sky Sports is sent by fans at any Leeds game to verify that fact.
Leeds also drive some of the sternest vitriol along opponents’ terraces. They are the big fish in the small pond, the target to be shot at, everyone’s cup final and nobody wants to see them leave. How else will they all get their Joy Division fix?
Nobody does a siege mentality like Leeds United, though. It felt like it was them against the world on Tuesday night at Middlesbrough. That’s how the supporters like it. They don’t want anyone to like them, but they also wouldn’t mind getting the goals their side deserves too.
Not once, but twice, they saw perfectly legitimate efforts chalked off by incorrect flags raised by the assistant referees for offside. Ao Tanaka was denied in the first half and Patrick Bamford in the second. It was a night which felt like they were going to need both of those strikes.
Middlesbrough were a decent threat all night. They asked questions of Leeds, but never had the quality to punish them. Michael Carrick’s side look about 10 per cent away from being a very good Championship outfit. Only three teams have limited United to less possession than they had at Riverside Stadium, but the natives would have rued how wasteful Delano Burgzorg, Finn Azaz and Kelechi Iheanacho were.
Karl Darlow, three days on from his first league start of the season, was reassuringly decent again. He stood up to what came his way and was a calming presence as the pressure rose in the closing 10 minutes of the game.
James scores the only goal of the game on Tuesday (Ed Sykes/Getty Images)
In front of him, Daniel Farke’s red wall was reunited with captain Ethan Ampadu and Joe Rodon in the trenches together, heading and kicking everything clear. Nobody on the pitch got close to their seven clearances apiece.
It was another of the club’s Wales internationals who, not for the first time, proved the difference on the pitch. Daniel James scored his 12th goal, which was his 21st involvement of the season. Nobody in the Championship has contributed more than that in front of goal. Junior Firpo and Manor Solomon deserve credit for their parts in creating a delightful team goal, but, as he described to The Athletic, James is a new animal in the box this season.
Fingers will be crossed that the hamstring concern which forced him off before full-time does not rule him out of the Good Friday game at Oxford United, even if this weekend’s Preston North End game comes too soon.
James’s goal, the solid away defence and a wasteful home attack ensured this was not an evening sullied by the officials. Tanaka’s was the more egregious decision. The Japan international was more than a yard onside, but Darren Williams raised his flag all the same. That is the third legal goal this assistant referee has ruled out for Leeds in the past nine weeks.
Farke said, if nothing else, the governing bodies needed to protect Williams. There is no sense in putting him in the mix for any further Leeds games.
“I don’t say anything, but if he is there, perhaps out of coincidence, with his mistakes against us, at some point you should protect him at least and send him to a different game,” he said. “I’m not sure why he’s always the assistant for us and I’m not sure why, in each game, he rules clear goals out for us.
“I’m struggling for words because we are playing here for such a big reward, for going up to the Premier League. It’s about millions of pounds and then we allow ourselves to have this level of assistant (referee) performances. I’m struggling with this, to be honest.”
Leeds should have gone in at the break with a two-goal lead, but, instead, they stayed within shooting distance of their hosts, who improved after the break. They brought far more of their attacks to better conclusions around the away area. There were still only two shots on target for Darlow to field all night, but 17 overall attempts illustrate the territory Middlesbrough were working in.
It was not comfortable for Leeds, but it should have been. Had the visitors been given the goal they earned, it would have given breathing room, a safety blanket, a collective Valium for the away end. The third goal, which never was, would have had heels on the desks and cigars all-round. Shaun Hudson, the other linesman, had different ideas.
Bamford, three minutes after his substitution, was denied the moment he had waited 351 days for. His last Leeds goal came on April 22, 2024, in this very fixture on Teesside, when the visitors won 4-3. That was the No 9’s last act of that ill-fated campaign and this goalless campaign has been just as ruinous for him on a personal level.
Before Tuesday, Bamford had amassed just 161 minutes of league action across 11 cameos. Saturday’s introduction at Luton Town was his first appearance since New Year’s Day. The latest in a long line of injuries (hamstring this time) since September 2021 had kept him away for three months. These are the goals that transform a striker’s outlook and he was robbed of that.
It was Isaac Schmidt and Wilfried Gnonto, his fellow substitutes, who had crafted the move so patiently and precisely to counter from their own half to Middlesbrough’s penalty box. Bamford’s run was perfectly timed and his finish was slotted under Mark Travers. He was ready to wheel around to the away corner, but the flag came quickly.
The goal would have been the perfect headline to what was another, all-round promising performance by Bamford. This was his 200th appearance for United after nearly seven years at Elland Road. It’s only taken two cameos from the bench, but he’s already put himself in the conversation for a first league start since that last Middlesbrough visit.
Bamford had a goal incorrectly ruled out for offside (Ed Sykes/Getty Images)
Joel Piroe has not scored in any of the seven games since the Sheffield United win and has grown increasingly anonymous in recent outings. Last night, he made Bamford look irresistible. His pressing was ineffective, he was weak in duels, dithered in possession and proved so careless in attack.
Bamford, by contrast, was every inch the experienced, battle-scarred campaigner the team needed in attack. At a time when Leeds were under the pump, Bamford held the ball up, battled, brought team-mates upfield, retained possession, even put tackles in and wasted time through the latter stages. Big question marks hang over his fitness to start a game, but Piroe and Mateo Joseph have opened the door to Bamford as a possible difference-maker through this run-in.
While Leeds were on the wrong end of officiating errors in Middlesbrough, Burnley and Sheffield United were dropping points elsewhere in the country. The former drew 0-0 at Derby County and the latter lost 1-0 at home to Millwall. This was one of those big nights during a run-in when promotion can be won or lost. It all feeds into the importance of Leeds hanging on the way they did.
This was an out-of-form, under-pressure team trying to prove it was not crumbling like so many outsiders thought. It was one win in six, it was an eight-point Burnley lead turned into a two-point deficit. They had to travel away from home to a play-off chaser on five wins in six. They had to overcome two terrible offside calls.
They had to dig in, fight that adversity and they did. Their reward? First place and a rediscovered belief they can do this.
(Top photo: Ed Sykes/Getty Images)
