After the run of four league games without a win, normal service has been resumed with a decisive victory over struggling Scunthorpe United.

The one change to the starting line-up was to restore Mc.Cartney to the left-back slot now that he’s available for the rest of the season, with Ben Parker dropping back to the bench. The game started in a blustery wind and there wasn’t much action in the opening quarter of an hour, before Leeds woke everybody up with the opening goal.  

Kasper sent a long ball downfield, and Snodgrass flicked a header on to Watt, and as he turned his man the Scunthorpe defender fell over, leaving him with plenty of space to smash his shot past Murphy . It was all a bit route one, but who cared? It took only four minutes to get the second, when Snodgrass played an excellent through ball to Gradel, who dummied the keeper and rolled it into the net.

And just before the half hour we made it three goals in thirteen minutes, with Snodgrass being the provider yet again. He made an excellent run across the field and played a one-two with Gradel, and as the ball came back to him he was tackled by two defenders at once. But it ran kindly for Johnson, who unleashed one of his trademark thunderbolts from 25 yards and it flew straight into the far corner of the net, leaving Murphy with no chance.

At that stage it looked as though were going to give Scunthorpe a right hammering, and let’s face it, we need to hand out a few tonkings to improve our goal difference, after all the heavy defeats we suffered earlier in the season. We continued to dominate although we took our foot off the gas a bit, with just one further chance coming before the break, Murphy producing a decent save from Watt.

Paynter came on for the second half as Becchio had taken a knock, though in any case the Argentinian hadn’t made any great contribution. Leeds were still well on top, but for a while seemed content with the three goal margin, still lacking the urgency to improve on the scoreline. And there were even a couple of chances for Scunthorpe, with Forte clipping the post with one shot and another being deflected wide.

So as time started to run out Grayson tried to give us a bit more urgency by sending Mc.Cormack ane Somma onto the field in place of Snodgrass and Watt. We now had three strikers on the field who hadn’t played many games in the last few months and who were keen to make an impression. Gradel and Mc.Cormack had shots blocked before Paynter was unlucky not to score his first goal in a Leeds shirt, the ball coming back off Somma with Murphy well beaten.

The fourth goal finally came just before the end of normal time, as Gradel beat several defenders in a run down the right hand side of the field before releasing Somma, and the South African’s shot flew across Murphy  into the far corner. There were four minutes of injury time for Scunthorpe to endure before the final whistle finally put them out of their misery. In truth they looked a quite awful side and on this form they are definitely going down.

The result leaves us in fifth place, still behind Cardiff and Norwich in fifth place after they drew with each other. It’s good to get back to winning ways, but we still have a lot to do to win automatic promotion, and we’ll have to face much sterner opposition in the weeks to come.

Photo: Action Images

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