Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
IT’S TOUGH AT TOP FOR LEEDS
Battling Hatters give Bielsa’s boys a fright
LEEDS suffered a familiar attack of promotion jitters as they struggled to salvage a point against bottom-club Luton.
They are still top of the Championship with a six-point advantage over Brentford in third, but this was a missed opportunity to turn the screw on their rivals in the race for automatic promotion.
Marcelo Bielsa’s side only came to life when they fell behind to Harry Cornick’s superb opener and were disappointing for parts of this game.
Striker Patrick Bamford also had an off night in front of goal to give ammunition to his critics.
Leeds have taken four points from their three games since the restart to offer hope to the chasing pack that they could stumble yet again.
Luton fully deserved a point to stretch their unbeaten run to six games – with three under Nathan Jones – and they must believe they can avoid a return to League One.
Leeds can point to losing skipper and defensive linchpin Liam Cooper inside the first 10 minutes with a back injury to be replaced by Gaetano Berardi.
They looked hesitant at the back and Jones screamed in vain for a penalty when Callum Mcmanaman went down under a challenge from Berardi with Bielsa equally adamant the Luton forward had handled.
Unsurprisingly, Bielsa was not happy and he replaced Berardi with Ezgjan Alioski at half-time, pushing Kalvin Phillips back to centre-half.
Luton also made a change, bringing on Cornick and within five minutes he gave them a shock lead.
Ryan Tunnicliffe pounced on a loose ball to send Cornick scurrying away and he beat Illan Meslier beautifully. The goal stung Leeds and Simon Sluga did well to keep out Tyler Roberts’ deflected effort.
Sluga defied Leeds almost singlehanded and he saved Phillips’ freekick and Alioski’s follow-up before Helder Costa hit the second rebound wide. He was finally beaten on 63 minutes when Alioski threaded a ball through to Stuart Dallas, who controlled it before slotting home.
Leeds were let down by Bamford as they pushed for a winner and he shot wide before falling over when presented with another chance.