Manchester United 1-2 Leeds United: Hello, hello

As the Leeds players and staff celebrated in front of the away end at Old Trafford, some people were asking if the police had blocked the 3,000 travelling Peacocks inside the ground. Nobody had left — because they didn’t want to.

If good things come to those who wait, then Leeds United Football Club and its fans were going to savour the moment. Forty-five years have passed since Brian Flynn scored in the real United’s last league win there, sixteen since Jermaine Beckford celebrated at the Stretford End.

Noah Okafor has written a new chapter in Leeds’ history with two excellent goals in a 2-1 win that few will ever forget. Daniel Farke named him in a starting XI more ambitious than some had expected for an away game against a side chasing Champions League football. Joe Rodon’s injury meant James Justin moved to centre-back and Gabi Gudmundsson came back into the side. Ao Tanaka started in place of the ailing Anton Stach, while both Okafor and Brenden Aaronson supported Dominic Calvert-Lewin to give Leeds a bit more power to their punch.

And it paid off almost immediately. It took Leeds only four minutes to open the scoring, Okafor reacting instinctively to finish as the ball bounced to him from Calvert-Lewin’s clash with Lenny Yoro.

Had Leeds scored too early, we wondered? They weren’t waiting around to find out, anyway. Their ambition kept Manchester United on their toes, even if it meant one or two hairy moments when Tanaka made a careless error in midfield. His patience across the past few months waiting on the bench has been rewarded with a goal in the FA Cup quarter-final and a mostly very accomplished ninety minutes on a historic night for Leeds. Tanaka showed bravery to recover from a minor panic early in the game to get right back in the thick of it and give Manuel Ugarte and Casemiro too much to think about as Leeds pressed for a second.

Alongside him captain Ethan Ampadu orchestrated a first half of imperious attacking football, rewarding Farke for his own bravery. Okafor’s second goal began with Ampadu stopping a counter-attack with an inch perfect tackle on Bruno Fernandes, who rolled around on the ground as if he’d been shot. Gudmundsson stared at him with the ball at his feet as if he were waiting for referee Paul Tierney to stop play for a career-ending injury. Instead, Leeds just had to crack on — Ampadu switched play and set up an attack. When that move broke down, he thwarted any attempts to clear the ball, winning it back on the edge of the box. Eventually it sat up perfectly for Okafor to blast a (deflected, whatever) volley past Senne Lammens before he ran off to the Stretford End and stood with his arms folded.

United were 2-0 up at Old Trafford. The fella beside me asked when was the last time Leeds had a two-goal lead away to this lot, only to realise it was in their previous trip there, which ended 2-2 under Michael Skubala.

Though nobody wanted to say it out loud, there was a quiet belief in the away end that this Leeds team were different and wouldn’t fold. Ampadu continued to assert himself in the middle. Pascal Struijk put his body on the line in every aerial duel and showed remarkable composure with the ball at his feet, even without his defensive partner of three years alongside him.

Tanaka could have given Leeds a third just before half-time after rounding the ‘keeper, but a stray touch allowed Lisandro Martinez to slide tackle him on the goalline. 70,000 home fans were left baffled as Tierney blew to end what was arguably Leeds’ best half of football under Farke. I was almost speechless as well, so overwhelmed with what we’d seen from the Peacocks in a game that most expected to be incredibly tense and probably sad.

Leeds survived the initial reaction at the start of the second half, refusing to allow the dormant home crowd to awaken. On the journey across the Pennines there was a point made that this season had been missing a moment of real controversy, something to set the media machine into motion and piss everyone off; when Martinez was caught on camera pulling Calvert-Lewin’s hair, I took a moment of selfishness to tell myself that we’d talked this into reality.

Almost a minute passed between Martinez grabbing the bun and referee Tierney whistling to stop play after VAR’s intervention. He sent the defender off for ‘violent conduct’, which I can understand perhaps blows the action out of proportion, but rules are rules. Not only is it against the laws of the game to pull an opponent’s hair, it’s just stupid. Tierney allowed common sense to prevail and it prompted the cameras to switch to Michael Carrick, standing gormlessly on the touchline looking like a former boyband member who had retrained as an undertaker.

Leeds being Leeds, they allowed Manchester United back into the game in the final half hour. “I would have preferred to play 11 v 11 but it is how it is,” Farke said after the match. “But in the end, we won the game.”

Casemiro scored in the 69th minute to set up an unnecessarily tense finish, during which Karl Darlow made crucial saves and Calvert-Lewin headed off the line. Farke made timely substitutions, bringing off a tired pair in Tanaka and Okafor for Ilia Gruev and Wilf Gnonto. He introduced Sean Longstaff in the final ten minutes to bring some more experience and maturity into the side.

United deserved to have more of a cushion going into seven minutes of injury time but remained committed to the psychodrama that following this football club forces you to be part of. Man Utd pushed for an equaliser, but Leeds held firm, winning timely free-kicks and holding their nerve to see out a famous victory.

Farke dropped to his knees at full-time like Andy Dufresne escaping Shawshank prison, having climbed through 500 yards of shit, or suffered through 97 minutes of watching Bruno Fernandes whine at a referee without being punished.

Being in the away end meant missing out on the excuses being made by Manchester United players, staff and fans, but instead sharing a beautiful half hour inside Old Trafford as it emptied, with only the 3,000 Leeds fans left to adorn their heroes with well earned praise.

“I’m not talking about the referee,” Fernandes told Sky Sports. “If I talk about the ref, I’m going to get in very big trouble because the rules are different and applied different for everyone.” There’s not even a shred of irony in that, by the way.

Carrick said we need “to be careful where the game’s going” when talking about Martinez’s red card and described Calvert-Lewin jumping with Yoro in the lead up to the first goal as a “forearm smash”. No credit to Leeds, no acceptance that his ‘United’ boys didn’t look like they had showed up until an hour into the game.

Some bemoaned three weeks of inaction for the home side as the cause of Leeds’ win, as if we had cheated by reaching the FA Cup quarter-final. It’s not as though Man Utd were on the piss for a fortnight, they were together in Ireland at Carton House for a week.

They also pissed off Armagh GAA and their hard nut coach Kieran McGeaney, who had booked the same resort for a crucial training camp, only to find out that the pitch they had been promised was marked out for soccer, not Gaelic football. “Maybe our money is not the same as theirs,” said McGeaney. I wonder if he was watching on Monday night.

The noise matters little to Leeds United, who moved six points clear of the relegation zone with only their second away win of the season. Not only was it a historic result, but also a crucial one for the season.

Every player earned the adulation they received, not just the goalscoring hero Okafor, who I’ve had my doubts about at times. I love being wrong at times like this. Tanaka, Struijk, Ampadu and more all stepped up hugely on a night where it would have been easy to falter. All credit to Farke for being bold and building on the momentum of last weekend’s cup heroics too.

It was an incredible night at Old Trafford, the likes of which we’ve been waiting for far, far too long. United are back.

(Image by AP Photo/Dave Thompson)