How to score seven twice and lose, by (of course) Leeds United FC

7-0 is an alluring scoreline. 6-0 is sexy but seven is heaven. It's rare to score so many, rarer still to score so much and not concede. Leeds do have a 10-0 in their history — poor old Lyn Oslo — but double figures is almost overdoing things. It rouses suspicion of a mismatch. People will look at that scoreline and wonder what's wrong with it. But 7-0? In the league? Between peers? It's just the right side of plausible, and rare enough to intrigue.

In the league, Leeds United have now won 7-0 five times. We know that the most recent, against Cardiff City, was carried out by a very good team that has a good chance of winning its division. We know that, in three others, Billy Bremner was playing and that in two of them he scored, so that must have been a good team as well. Twice it was. The team that beat Chelsea in 1967 was becoming great, the 1-11 that beat Southampton in 1972 was, Paul Madeley for Terry Cooper apart, the best Leeds ever had. Even then you had to have Madeley somewhere. Bremner's other participance in seven was against Lincoln City in April 1961. Those were not put in the net by a great team but one finishing 14th in Division Two, when Don Revie had just been appointed manager. There were three games of the season left and Lincoln were terrible. They finished bottom of the league by nine points after conceding 95 goals. That explains that.

What, then, of the Peacocks' seventh-heavenly vanquishing of Middlesbrough at Elland Road at the end of October 1930? This was First Division football, early in the season. Middlesbrough were on their way to finishing 7th. The scoreline included two goals by Tom Jennings, United's fourth best ever goalscorer. This must have been quite some Leeds team, right, one of the best of the pre-Revie era? Ha. Ha ha. Let me tell you not as any kind of historian of Leeds United but as a fellow fan, as your friend: ha ha ha.

I'll stop laughing long enough to admit that, yes, a month before this match Leeds scored seven in another fixture, a 7-3 win at Blackpool. These Peacocks had it in them. And against Middlesbrough, with Russell Wainscoat returned to the attack, they had the mood about them to repeat the feat. They played one minute and they scored one goal: Harry Duggan crossing, Billy Furness' header being knocked into the air and Tom Mitchell bundling the ball over the line, with chest or head or both. It only took six more minutes to make it 2-0, when centre-forward Jennings turned provider and Duggan took charge of his cross, bringing it under control and making space for his low shot to go in. Wainscoat made it 3-0 then 4-0 either side of half-time, the first a leaping header at Mitchell's cross and the second by getting his foot on a cross by Furness. The game drifted for a while until the last fifteen minutes, when Duggan got his second goal with a shot across the goalkeeper, and Jennings bagged his brace, scoring the seventh with a driven shot just before the final whistle.

A lot of credit went to the Leeds half-backs, led by Ernie Hart and Willis Edwards and joined by young Wilf Copping, playing his best game yet. They were giving the forwards plenty of openings, and with two of those good chances in the second half Leeds should have made it 9-0. Those forwards were concentrated in their work and aggressive in their movements. They were using their brains, rotating their positions, taking opportunities as they came, and Furness in particular never waited to make use of the ball when it was at his feet. The only slight criticism was of Duggan, who was overdoing the tricks and should have crossed much earlier, perhaps learning from the approach of Mitchell. 'Mitchell made the job of passing a defender,' Hugh Whitfield wrote in the Leeds Mercury, 'look as easy as buying a bucket on The Headrow'.