Leeds United vs Oxford & Stoke: Moment after moment
The Premier League? What might be next are a lot of things we won't like. Gradually, then suddenly, Leeds United could change. But for two weeks we have a club with no stress and a team that, when there is no stress, wins 6-0 and makes us happy. It only becomes a moment when it's over.
The old saying about going bankrupt applies to promotion to the Premier League, and how it happens gradually, then suddenly, and at the behest of broadcasting schedules. I don't know where I was when Leeds United were promoted on Monday because I don't know when promotion happened. Was it when Joel Piroe opened the scoring against Stoke City? Was it when he scored his fourth and United's fifth, before half-time? Was it at full-time at Elland Road, a whistle so final and a celebration so complete that Burnley playing Sheffield United, the important game coming, felt irrelevant? Was promotion actually, eventually, suddenly clinched when the final whistle blew at Turf Moor, or was it when some data connectors, somewhere, triggered an update to the English Football League Championship table? Or was it only when Sheffield United players started scrapping? When Largie Ramazani got his shades on and started to dance?
Promotion, I think, was an all-weekend thing extending from being an all-season thing, because you can't get to this without going through all that. Leeds United didn't batter Stoke City 6-0 only because Leeds United are six goals at least better than Stoke City. It had a bit to do with Stoke's season being effectively finished, two wins last week almost getting them to safety, and their players barely turning up in the tackles at Elland Road. But it had more to do with what Leeds had built over 42 games before going to Oxford United's place on Friday night, and the way they defended their season in that match.
Friday defied expectations in its own way, because expectations had been raised in ways that football rarely delivers. Nobody in West Yorkshire was expecting Sheffield United to chuck their season away with three defeats and a scrap in one week, and when it happened, it gave Leeds hope that Good Friday could be marvellous if the Blades couldn't cope with Cardiff City. Instead we were reminded of a football lesson that is easily, willingly, enthusiastically forgotten: don't go getting your hopes up. Instead of going according to dreams, Friday played out according to norms across three staggered kick-offs and mounting disappointments: Burnley went behind but beat Watford, fine, and Sheffield United made light work of Cardiff. That meant the norms had to include Leeds, being normal, and keeping the gaps in the league table as they were.
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Beating Oxford United was not an easy task but Leeds, apparently devoted to falling apart and as recently as two weeks ago, went through a routine of winning that has become as normal as normal gets for Leeds. A tough away game, high expectations, earlier results creating pressure, and Will Vaulks with his long throw like the Raphinha of Oxford. The Peacocks dealt with it all. The lead was well taken and well timed. After a sturdy half-hour Leeds took a short throw-in high on Oxford's left and worked the ball across so Junior Firpo and Manor Solomon could threaten their right. Leeds turned back, making for Oxford's left again, and now the back-line was misshapen to tempt Joe Rodon and Jayden Bogle simultaneously. The pass from one and the run from the other broke Oxford's defence altogether, and Bogle crossed low first time and at the far post Solomon slid in and finished first time, doing over his miss from Kenilworth Road. Leeds had the lead in their consistent style — gradually, then suddenly.
It was an important goal to lessen the tension, as much as to establish the lead. Another goal didn't come so, as an hour went by, that one became more important. Joe Rodon and Karl Darlow made themselves important, the first by heading everything clear that he could reach, the second by catching everything else. They made themselves examples of how, sometimes, players can decide a game's outcome all on their own, through their own behaviours. They had made their minds up that there would be no risks, no mistakes, no way Leeds could concede, and that became infectious through the side. Leeds were going to win because they had set their minds on it and their bodies followed.
It wasn't easy to still feel decisive by Monday afternoon. The rain tipping down before kick-off didn't look like promotion water. Stoke, to face the all-white kits of Leeds, turned up in all black, promising a funeral of our angelic hopes by pure contrast. They won the toss and changed the ends away from Leeds' traditional liking. Their manager Mark Robins might not be the devil himself but his goal for the Reds in an FA Cup match in 1990 set that club up for a decade of dominance. First they had to lose the league title to Leeds United, though, so perhaps we should thank Robins for keeping Alex Ferguson in the job for 1992.
We should also thank him for not substituting Josh Wilson-Esbrand and Bae Jun-Ho in the first five minutes at Elland Road. Now is not the time to dwell too long on Stoke City but starting the game without any discernible left side did them no favours. At one point in the first half there was shouting and finger-pointing among the Leeds team because Junior Firpo had gone off towards the six yard box without making sure Ilia Gruev was dropping in, but the counterpoint was that Stoke had two players dropping back all the time and they weren't doing a damn thing, and besides, this was how Junior Firpo had scored to make it 4-0.
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He'd been up, on the half-hour, hunting for goal five. He didn't get it, but this was one of the best moments of the season. Wilf Gnonto, helped by Bogle and Brenden Aaronson tormenting Wilson-Esbrand and Jun-Ho, got to United's right byline and zipped a low cross through the six yard box where Firpo couldn't quite reach. Then, as Million Manhoef ran to collect the ball in the opposite corner, Firpo, Solomon and Gruev all sprinted across to convene and cram him in and stop any getaway upfield. Aaronson joined them to barge down an attempted clearance, Solomon and Gruev fought with Ali Al-Hamadi for the ball, and then Piroe had it and was passing to Ao Tanaka. A few passes later Firpo was in down the left side of the goal trying to cross and this was Leeds United at their relentless, constant, hard-pressing, attacking best.
Perhaps it's easier to play this well when they're winning 4-0 after half-an-hour, but perhaps there's an argument about how football becomes more fun of a game when there's less pressure on the players and they can play. But, without the original pressure to win promotion, to please fans, to make millions for investors, to revive a city region's economy, where would the release come that lets the players feel so free? It feels impossible, now, to put the cork back in football and declare this thing a pure sport again. So games like these become more valuable, when we can let the players be their best selves. Or, more accurately, when they've earned the time to be their best selves. Leeds 6-0 Stoke didn't happen in a vacuum; it happened because of Oxford 0-1 Leeds making it inevitable, even because Luton 1-1 Leeds was a decent away point before Sheffield United, home and away, four times, got none.
Joel Piroe didn't exactly start against Stoke as if all the pressure of last week's misses was gone from him, but the first goal was all it took for him to score four. It's possible to underrate the trio of his hat-trick but the first, after a litany of Stoke miskicks, was a very sharp finish from Solomon's slightly too-back cut-back. The second was classic Piroe, taking his time in the penalty area to pick a spot low down the side of one of the division's best goalies. The third, after Gnonto was allowed to do everything twice in the penalty area, shoot, and have that shot saved, took proper technique as the ball rolled away from goal, all tight angles and postage stamps and finding the only place the ball could go. His fourth? Well, first, Firpo made it 4-0 by almost stumbling through Bogle's low cross and looping the ball in off both his left feet. Then for 5-0 a great piece of control and a shot by Bogle cannoned off the post and into Piroe's face, and his striker's instinct was not to worry about the impact but to make sure he was prodding the ball over the line. For United's sixth, for the record, ex-Leeds loanee Lewis Baker jogged back to mark Gnonto while Solomon lined up a cross, but got shoved away — by 5ft 7in Gnonto — as the cross came in. 5ft 7in Gnonto headed in at the back post.
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It wasn't done. There was half-an-hour left at Elland Road. Sheffield United still had to go to Burnley later and do... something. But it felt done. Harry Gray, a sixteen-year-old striker and a Leeds United heirloom, was brought on for his debut. The ball was kicked about, players ran around, there was a lap of honour, there was dispersal across Leeds as a population wondered, what next? Sheffield United, it was now known, would not do anything. Put the telly on and watch it, but they just wouldn't. That felt as clear as April 1992, when by beating Sheffield United at lunchtime Leeds United made sure that, at Anfield that afternoon, their rivals from Old Trafford would not be doing anything. Gordon Strachan, that afternoon, passed the time by going for a swim. I don't know if any Leeds players or fans went swimming this time, unless it was in ale.
The moment in 1992 came in the 87th minute of the match at Anfield, when Mark Walters struck Liverpool's second and ITV commentator Brian Moore struck an authoritative tone and images of Lee Chapman's sofa flashed up on the screen. "And now the title goes to Leeds United!" Moore announced, "Without any doubt at all ... That finishes the season, it finishes it for Manchester United, two goals down now. And there’s no coming back from that." He might as well have said it, though, when Brian Gayle was heading into his own net at Bramall Lane hours earlier. There was no coming back from that.
In 2020 the moment was easily picked out, too: when Emile Smith-Rowe ran through on goal, as I sat on my armchair scrolling my phone on an idle summer afternoon of Covid-enforced boredom. I can't tell you without looking it up now what day of the week it was. I can tell you I looked up just as my television showed the ball rolling into West Bromwich Albion's net, and I thought, wait, I think that means Leeds are up? And I went back to my phone, scrolling for confirmation that took a few moments. And that was the moment, alone.
2025's promotion doesn't feel like it has that single defining moment, or if I had to choose I'd pick full-time at Oxford, and have it belong to the fans in the away end there or behind the goal standing on buses and vans. But not all promotions are the same, and appreciating the contours of this one involves appreciating the season it represents. Part of the desire around Elland Road, after self-inflicting relegation in 2023 and making such a dramatic drawn-out mockery of trying to get back up in 2024, was for a painless and untroubled journey back to the top-flight hell-competition our club belongs in. That, for much of 2024/25, became the problem, as goal after goal brought win after win and it was only against Sunderland and Sheffield United, in mid-February, that the season got grit to give it some flavour. That and the flirtations with not-making it, of course, but even Leeds' attempts at Leedsing this season up were half-hearted. Only four defeats, only 0-1 each time. The worst run of the season, the disaster and collapse, was three score draws. Digging out three wins by a single goal against Middlesbrough, Preston and Oxford meant Monday could be party-planned and the Lowfields could be filled that evening with people, smoke and fireworks. The Championship title is there to be won now but there are almost two weeks to take care of that, now. Soon we'll want to know what winning promotion means, because winning promotion has to mean something, eventually; football doesn't like going for long without moving onto what's next. The Premier League? What might be next are a lot of things we won't like. Gradually, then suddenly, Leeds United could change. But for two weeks we have a club with no stress and a team that, when there is no stress, wins 6-0 and makes us happy. It only becomes a moment when it's over. ⭑彡