Sam Byram followed his smiling, fist-pumping teammates down the tunnel at Pride Park, turned to a member of Leeds United’s media team, and smirked. “Bit of a slog, wan’it?” Daniel Farke was soon making the same journey, winking at the camera. “These are the best wins, I tell you.”

It’s hard to believe, but since losing at Elland Road at the start of December, Derby have been decent. In the four games preceding Leeds’ visit to the East Midlands, they’d lost just once, held Burnley to a 0-0 draw, beat West Brom, and thrashed Portsmouth 4-0. Crucially, those two wins were at home, where before Leeds came to town they’d won six of eleven matches, in comparison to just one of twelve away fixtures. Their biggest game of the season attracted their biggest crowd of 2024/25, and they’d even brought a drum. Welcome to hell. There’s a Greggs by the megastore.

Leeds have been guilty of making themselves feel like guests at other teams’ homes this season, but after snatching a hard-fought point at Preston and emerging from the fog of Stoke with three points, The Peacocks confidently asserted their usual dominance from the opening whistle. It isn’t by chance that those results have coincided with the return of captain Ethan Ampadu. Even with a rotated forward line, within the first two minutes Largie Ramazani found space only to choose the wrong option to his right when Brenden Aaronson would have been in on goal to his left; Jayden Bogle got in behind the defence on the overlap and almost created a chance; Wilf Gnonto’s cross was palmed out by goalkeeper Jacob Zetterstrom to the feet of Aaronson, whose loose touch denied him a chance to shoot.

Selected on the right wing, Gnonto was everywhere in those opening stages, reprising his role from the win at Sheffield Wednesday, during a period of the season when he looked like the best player in the division. Some neat interplay with Aaronson led to Gnonto making a chance for Mateo Joseph at the near post that he failed to divert towards goal.

“I thought the first ten we showed them too much respect,” Derby boss Paul Warne said afterwards, and his players soon rectified that by committing increasingly clumsy fouls all over the pitch, much to the fury of the home fans, who were daft enough to blame the referee for every rash tackle or kick to Ampadu’s nose. While the crowd became irate, the fouls had the effect Warne was hoping for, puncturing Leeds’ momentum and making the rest of the half look more like the standard Champo sludge.

As ever under Daniel Farke, Leeds remained patient. Joseph did well to force a save at Zetterstrom’s near post from the edge of the box and teed up Aaronson for the best chance of the half, snapping a half-volley harmlessly over the bar a week after Farke had implored him to keep his head over the ball at half-time against Oxford. Aside from a few cuts and bruises, the only trouble Derby caused Leeds was a cross that almost dropped over Illan Meslier and into the far corner. They ended the first half having failed to have a single shot.

Leeds should have taken the lead immediately after the break, Aaronson hitting the ‘keeper rather than the corner after a chance dropped to him in the penalty area, before Joseph blazed another opportunity over after being put through by a brilliant Bogle pass. With Leeds’ rotated forwards failing to stake a claim for more regular starts, Derby’s crowd started to warm to the occasion as United threatened to walk into a suckerpunch. On his 200th appearance for the club, Meslier needed to be alert to save from a header at a corner.

Ramazani had one final opportunity to give his manager a selection dilemma, meeting a slapstick cross that deflected off two players with a slapstick shot as he fell to the ground, drawing a slapstick save from a flapping Zetterstrom. Farke turned to his bench, albeit only after Pascal Struijk had to apologise for taking a quick throw-in that prevented Dan James, Manor Solomon, and Joel Piroe getting onto the pitch even sooner. Within two minutes of the triple substitution, Leeds countered, and Solomon’s superb pass put James in one-on-one, but he failed to beat the ‘keeper. It was starting to feel like one of those nights, particularly when Ampadu somehow headed the subsequent corner wide.

Thankfully, Leeds made sure the only goal of the game was worth waiting for and worth winning any match. While Leeds were stringing pass after pass together, the home crowd started imploring ‘Come on Derby!’, only to be quickly shut up by Solomon and Piroe speeding the play up with two quick, sharp passes that left Aaronson in space as he gracefully took a touch and slid the ball into the bottom corner. It was Farke’s ideal football in its purest form. Leeds’ manager called it the goal of the season, so beautiful he’ll “put it straight away into my poetry album”.

Even Farke seems confounded by Aaronson, who not long before had run to the touchline assuming he was being subbed off. “Sometimes he’s a bit of a weird guy,” Farke said in his post-match press conference. “Perhaps he saw the wrong number. But I love this guy as well.” Even a cold-hearted bastard like me couldn’t help but love Aaronson’s grin at the full-time whistle as his teammates celebrated Leeds’ matchwinner.

Sure, Leeds should have won by more — Pat Bamford came off the bench late on to become the latest player to miss a one-on-one — but there’s no need to be greedy. Exactly a year to the day, Leeds lost at West Brom and were trailing leaders Leicester by seventeen points. This time around, Leeds are ending the year top of the league, the only team in the top eight to win on the day, with players all over the pitch knowing they need to be at their best or they’ll be replaced by another high-calibre option.

Whisper it quietly, but after the disappointment of last season, this feels like a team and manager who understand it’s a slog and have learned what’s required to get the job done. As Farke said himself: “Fifty-one points is an amazing effort, credit to everyone involved. But we need to keep going.” ⬢

(Photograph by Barrington Coombs, via Alamy)