Two players sign another contract with the Leed in regard to there previous match with…
As the upbeat, full-volume, strains of Status Quo’s Rocking All Over The World greeted the final whistle Daniel Farke bounded on to the pitch and made a point of embracing every Leeds player.
Twelve wins and a draw in the past 13 league games have lifted the German’s side to the top of the Championship for the first time this season – above the one-time runaway leaders, Leicester, on goal difference.
With Ipswich and Southampton still also very much in the hunt for the two automatic promotion places nothing is guaranteed but, with eight games remaining, Leeds may just have hit the front at precisely the right moment.
Nathan Broadhead scores the third for Ipswich in their 6-0 win over Sheffield Wednesday on 16 March 2024.
Championship roundup: Rampant Ipswich hit Sheffield Wednesday for six
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The erosion of the 17 point advantage Leicester held over his team at new year emphasises that Farke is evidently building something very special at Elland Road. Although Leicester have a game in hand, Leeds, significantly, boast the second tier’s best defensive record.
“I’m very proud of the boys, they have so much unity in the dressing room,” Farke said after his players rose above Millwall’s streetwise spoiling tactics, refusing to be provoked into a series of distracting feuds.
“If we don’t enjoy this moment then, one day, we will ask ourselves why? But we also have to make sure we stay on it and remain in a similar position at the end.”
It took Leeds 33 minutes to breach the barricade of bright orange-shirted Millwall defenders. Wilfried Gnonto’s glorious change of pace enabled the Italy winger to cut inside and, having switched feet without breaking stride, direct a fabulously unerring left‑foot shot between Matija Sarkic and a post.
If the finish was sublime so, too, was Patrick Bamford’s defender-confounding decoy manoeuvre. Despite a recent renaissance, the centre-forward still has his critics in West Yorkshire but anyone doubting the depth of Bamford’s talent would surely have thought twice after watching the striker take a millisecond to assess Gnonto’s intentions before cutting across a marker and cleverly creating invaluable space for his teammate.
Farke’s team should probably have had a penalty before half‑time but instead the perhaps overly laid‑back referee, Stephen Martin, inflamed local angst by taking a lenient view of Jake Cooper’s high knee in Joe Rodon’s face.
Given he had been booked earlier after an ultimately comedic bout of wrestling with Gnonto, and was also involved in a couple of other contentious incidents, Cooper could count himself more than slightly fortunate to have got away with that one.
