Luton Town      1 (Jones 15) 

Leeds United   1 (James 28)

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5th ​April, 2025, EFL Championship.

11,867.

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Once again today,  a slack few seconds early in the game cost us points on the road. The one thing you really cannot afford to do is to give struggling teams a taste of success and something to fight for!

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Leeds started brightly this afternoon and forged a decent chance early on. Karl Darlow wasted no time in showing he meant business as he quickly threw the ball half the length of the pitch into the path of Manor Solomon down the Leeds left. Solomon crossed and there was little Dan James in space at the back post. Sadly he got his header all wrong. Then, two good saves from Thomas Kaminski reminded us that every keeper we ever face suddenly becomes prime Gordon Banks when Leeds United are in  town. Kaminski first denied Junior Firpo as the ball rebounded off him and headed for the corner of the net and then he dived full length to stop a dipping Manor Solomon shot. Leeds had started well but chances were already going begging.

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Then, in the 15th minute,  Ao Tanaka was caught in possession, near halfway, on the Leeds left. Eli Adebayo robbed him, raced down the Luton Left, and touched the ball to Jordan Clark. He outwitted Joe Rodon too easily with a little jink and dummy to get his cross over, and there was Isaiah Jones, free as a bird in acres of space at the back post to volley home. All season long, we have not conceded many goals but, when we do, it is usually easy to find an error or two in our play en route to the back of our net. Ao Tanaka is one of several Leeds players not at his best and he’d normally be much tougher in the tackle, Joe Rodon is making mistakes we’d not seen early in the season, and our ability to leave players unmarked at the back post, well, that’s been going on all season. We’d shot ourselves in the foot yet again and given ourselves a Herculean task to come back against a side stretching every sinew to avoid back-to-back relegations.

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Thankfully, Dan James brought us parity just before the half-hour with a trademark left foot curler that finally beat Kaminski but it is hard to argue that the 1 – 1 halftime score wasn’t a fair reflection.

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Luton lost the influential and dangerous Adebayo early in the second half, replaced by Tahith Chong, but Luton were still able to conjure up as many sights of goal as we achieved. Indeed it was credit to Karl Darlow that when Thelo Aasgaard cut on to his right side and shot towards the far corner of the net, Darlow was equal to it. Not for the first time today, Karl won the applause of the Leeds faithful and his handling was safe all game.

 

Leeds rang the changes throughout the second half and Patrick Bamford looked lively when he came on for the final half hour including a couple of strikes on goal but, truth be told, neither side really did enough to deserve more than a point from this game. Leeds had three big chances to just one for the Hatters but we managed to miss all three of ours while Luton pounced on their only big chance. The Dan James goal was not even recorded as a big chance.

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Leeds were well below par again and it’s a mystery where the fluent attacking side of January and February has gone. We’re by no means a poor side but just when almost all sides have upped their game as they fight for points throughout the table, we’ve lost some of our sparkle. Luton fought and scrapped for every ball, helped by being gifted that early goal to protect. Incidentally, the match stats were remarkably similar to those from the QPR game, the previous away game; lots of possession, but too few opportunities created and, when they were, we couldn't put them away. We had a spell early in the season like that but worked our way out of it.

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It looked like being a total disaster of a day at one point, with Leeds dropping two more points and Burnley claiming all three at Coventry. But the surprise Oxford win over the Blades is enough to keep things interesting. Leeds really must quickly find a way to start winning again though and that has to begin at the Riverside on Tuesday night, difficult as that looks at the moment. We are still very much in the race but we need to stop dropping points while hoping that our rivals will!

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