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The Leeds crowd always save their main abuse for the visit of Manchester United and the temperature rose by several degrees for the return of Rio Ferdinand. The £30million central defender was greeted with jeers of 'Judas' and booed at every touch.
As so often when these two sides meet, the level of football seldom lived up to the quality of the players on display although Manchester United had much the better of the first half with Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Ole Solskjaer and Ryan Giggs causing the home defence plenty of problems.
Paul Robinson demonstrated why Terry Venables is picking him ahead of Nigel Martyn when he spread himself to deny van Nistelrooy from close range, and Ian Harte was well positioned at the post to chest away David Beckham's curling free-kick.
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Lucas Radebe and Eirik Bakke came on at the start of the second half in place of the injured Dominic Matteo and Nick Barmby but the main change was that Leeds started to take the game to the Red Devils.
Bowyer went close with a powerful shot and Alan Smith was pushing forward on to the back four.
Ferguson had to rearrange his side when Nicky Butt came off with an injury to be replaced by Luke Chadwick, but it was Leeds who made the breakthrough midway through the half.
After some good build up, Harte swung a right-foot cross into the area where Kewell leapt between Ferdinand and Laurent Blanc to power his header past Barthez.
The visitors kept trying to force an equaliser and had a penalty appeal turned down, but there was no way past the Leeds defence