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Leeds Relegated

April 28th, 2007 By Brian Koski --> Comments

Leeds have been essentially relegated to League One football next season, following a 1-1 home draw with Ipswich on Saturday, combined with Hull winning away at Cardiff 1-0. Although Leeds can still finish even with Hull on points, Hull are ahead of Leeds by 9 in goal differential. The Leeds-Ipswich match was tainted by a chaotic Elland Road pitch invasion (following Alan Lee’s 88th minute equalizer for the Tractor Boys), which delayed the match by 30 minutes.

At the top of the table, Birmingham moved back into first with a massive 2-0 result over Sheffield Wednesday at St. Andrews, which eliminated the Owls from playoff contention. In light of Sunderland’s 3-2 win on Friday v. Burnley, the pressure is now firmly on Derby ahead of their Sunday fixture with Crystal Palace in London. A Derby draw or loss against Palace would virtually secure top flight football next season for both Birmingham and Sunderland.

In addition to Sheffield Wednesday, Colchester United’s hopes of qualifying for the playoffs realistically ended Saturday with a 3-1 loss at Stoke (due to an inferior goal differential to Stoke and Southampton). That leaves five clubs competing for the final three playoff positions going into the final round of fixtures (West Brom, Wolves, Southampton, Stoke, and Preston).

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    I still can't believe Leeds got relegated. And what an unbelievable set of circumstances at the end of the match. Unbelievably bad, of course.


    It just goes to show that there are still idiots out there. A small minority of the Leeds fans invaded the pitch while the game was going on, and then launched an attack on the Ipswich fans.



    Complete chaos.



    Dennis Wise should get the sack. Ken Bates should be kicked out. And the Leeds fans that were involved in today's unfortunate incidents need to be identified on CCTV and prosecuted.



    Cheers,

    The Gaffer
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    A shocking disasterous series of events for one of England's great all time clubs has led to this horrible event. I am not a Leeds fan, far from it. But a club of Leeds history and reputation being relegated to the third flight of English soccer is one of the worst things to happen in the league in recent years. Geez, I can recall picking Leeds to win the EPL prior to the 1999-2000 season and personally hailing them as the new Man United on the Big Soccer forums. The following year Leeds almost won the Champions League. If you re-created Leeds teams from the early part of the decade with Viducka, Hasselbank, Woodgate, Alan Smith, etc they'd be a top 4 team still!


    Ken Bates and Dennis Wise brought the old Chelsea mentality of not being good enough to Leeds and this is very sad.

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