4th October 2024. EFL Championship.
That was about as ‘Leedsy’ as it gets wasn’t it? A trip to what many regarded as the best team in the Championship at this moment in time, an almost flawless performance to get to within seconds of victory to follow up another decent performance on Tuesday, and we manage to come up with a completely new way to shoot ourselves in the foot.
At the end of the day we can take comfort in the fact that we were every bit as good, if not better, than the Lucky Black Cats throughout an entertaining and at times tense game. It’s that fact we need to remember when we return after the international break. Even missing two key first-team players in Ampadu and Gruev we have found a solution and we have the quality to see off most teams in this division. As it is, we were the first team to even score at the Stadium of Light this season let alone get within seconds of a famous and deserved victory.
We showed real character to come from behind again and to shrug off the early Sunderland goal. It was admittedly a poor goal to conceded, allowing the Black Cats to get to our byeline, then giving too much space at tour back post. Meslier saved the initial shot but we then slept while Rigg pounced to tap in the rebound.
It took just 13 minutes to get back on terms with another Joel Piroe goal; another fine example of the striker’s art and justifying Daniel Farke’s decision to start him for this game. A neatly worked second, with Firpo and Gnonto showing their increasingly important partnership down the Leeds left, had us in the box seat and there were other chances too, notably a Ramazani header that flew off the turf and over the bar and an Aaronson shot that was unluckily blocked, that could have prevented that last-minute disaster.
As it was, a lack of game management at the very death – a needless free kick given out on the Sunderland left, getting outjumped for a header, and a sloppy-looking piece of goalkeeping, wasted all of our earlier good work.
At the end of the day, this has still been a good week, a week that has shown we can be, probably are, amongst the best two or three teams in the division. Sunderland will argue that they deserved their last minute good fortune and the match stats tend to suggest they have a case, but Leeds only have themselves to blame for shedding two more valuable points and we have to be more professional as we go forward; manage the game out when we have the points in our grasp. Missed chances cost us against Portsmouth and Burnley – arguably five points already wasted – and now we’ve chucked away two more. Hopefully, these early season errors will not come back to haunt us next May.
Sky Bet Championship
Sunderland 2 (Rigg 9’, Browne 90+6’)
Leeds United 2 (Piroe 22’, Firpo 55’)
Sunderland: Patterson (GK), Cirkin, Neil (C), Bellingham, Roberts, Rigg (Browne 73’), O’Nien, Mundle, Isidor, Mepham, Hume. Subs not used: Moore (GK), Rusyn, Ba, Connolly, Aleksic, Hjelde, Watson, Johnson.
Leeds: Meslier (GK), Bogle, Firpo, Struijk (C), Rodon, Rothwell, Piroe (Joseph 77’), Aaronson, Ramazani (Schmidt 90’), Tanaka, Gnonto (Byram 90’). Subs not used: Darlow (GK), Bamford, Gelhardt, Debayo, Chambers, Crew.
Venue: Stadium of Light
Attendance: 41,769
Referee: Tim Robinson
Booked: Bellingham, Neil, Rigg (Sunderland) Rodon, Firpo, Bogle (Leeds)