After Leeds lost at Blackburn earlier in the season, I tried my best to focus on the positives but couldn’t help acknowledging the devil of nagging doubt on my shoulder:

The expectation of this Leeds squad compared to the reality of the results and performances means every failure to take all three points feels far more fraught than it ought to.
Sure, Leeds are in a good position and fans would at least make their own lives more enjoyable by keeping their heads — I’m afraid to say we will lose more games this season — but the players and the manager also need to earn that faith by living up to their reputations more consistently and convincingly.

That was the end of November, and Leeds are unbeaten in the Championship ever since. If a shaky away record was the only thing holding the Peacocks back from promotion, they have followed that loss at Ewood Park with a seven-match unbeaten sequence on their travels, winning four. Zoom out further, and Leeds are eradicating all reasons to doubt their credentials: fourteen league games without defeat; six clean sheets in a row, with eighteen goals scored in those last half a dozen fixtures; and records being matched that were either set by Don Revie’s Super Leeds or even further back a century ago.

Leeds United have a +47 goal difference for only the second time in the club’s entire history. It’s the best since the end of the 1927-28 campaign (+49, scored 98, conceded 49). #lufc

— Jonny Cooper (@JRCooper26) February 11, 2025

In his best role as everyone’s favourite wise old uncle, Josuha Guilavogui posted on social media after the 7-0 mullering of Cardiff:

Our collective strength was not born today.
It has been built over many months of hard work and dedication. I feel privileged to be part of a team with such solidarity.
I have enough experience now to know that what we are experiencing is special.

While some supporters were tempted by the idea of pressing the big red ‘fuck about and find out’ button during the occasionally clunky start to the season, Leeds’ players and manager deserve credit for holding their nerve after another turbulent summer and building into the campaign. The evidence of those months of hard work was shown in the opening minutes at Watford on Tuesday night, with Joel Piroe cushioning three crisp first-time passes to teammates in positions where we have so often seen the ball bounce off him and to an opposition player. Likewise, Brenden Aaronson was releasing the ball without taking too many touches or getting stuck in the fog of his own brain. They might have been small and simple acts, but they suggested Leeds were on it from the start having previously been guilty of sleepwalking into sloppy performances. And when Leeds are on it, every other team in the league is fucked.

While the theory goes that Leeds struggle against teams that sit back and let them have all the ball, their record over the last two seasons suggests they’ll find a breakthrough eventually more often than not. Instead, Watford tried to control possession and Leeds were happy to let them, as if enjoying the novelty of the opposition leaving big green spaces all over the pitch just waiting to be attacked. Watford have had a handy knack of doing Leeds’ attacking for us this season, and after gifting us two goals in the win at Elland Road, also gifted United the opener at Vicarage Road as Moussa Sissoko gave the ball straight to Dan James in front of goal, a chance which he tucked away into the far corner with a tidy finish.

With Watford daring to try go forward, the game occasionally broke into basketball periods of back-and-forth attacking, allowing a Leeds team that largely missed our annual early-round FA Cup defeat to display an intensity that resembled some of the best under Marcelo Bielsa — routinely reacting to breaks by outnumbering Watford in both attack and defence. Before long Aaronson’s intelligent ball — yes, really! — left Piroe two on one with a defender, and Piroe picked the right pass for James to finish emphatically into the roof of the net and double his tally.

Leeds still needed to rely on Illan Meslier making a sharp save as Junior Firpo went full false three and left Sissoko alone down the right, but such defensive lapses have been welcome in the last few games as Meslier has regained confidence and remembered how to be a goalkeeper. Manor Solomon responded by adding a third after turning from a simple throw-in and finding the bottom corner from the edge of the box via the type of lucky deflection we’ve been owed more of since, I dunno, 1919. It would have been even nicer if James completed his hat-trick from the halfway line shortly before half-time, latching onto a terrible chest back from a defender with some classic zoomies and leaving the goalkeeper scrambling only for the ball to bounce wide — but I suppose we shouldn’t cash all our chips at once.

Watford continued their slapstick display after the break, dominating possession yet still managing to concede a corner with a miscued back-pass from thirty yards. With the three points already won, the second half allowed the magnificent midweek away following to pull out all the hits — Sky TV is fucking shit, Leeds are falling apart again, and the usual reception for Champo perma-sub Tom Ince and his dad. He’d only been on the pitch a few minutes when Ao Tanaka scrambled his brain by simply dribbling in a circle, sending Ince Jr running in the complete opposite direction and opening up a pass to Solomon, who in turn found Piroe. Typically relaxed, Piroe took a touch that left centre-half Mattie Pollock on his arse before nestling the ball into the back of the net. Leeds have scored more spectacular goals this season, but none that have been quite so piss-taking, therefore it might be my favourite. Pollock, Watford’s captain on the night and a player who spent a few years in Leeds’ academy, had to be subbed off before the end presumably out of sheer humiliation.

Daniel Farke described the goal as “poetry in motion” and the victory as one of Leeds’ best of the campaign. He could have said that a few times in recent weeks. The way Farke has got his team playing right now, the wins just keep getting better and better. ⬢

(Photograph by Zac Goodwin, via Alamy)