Leeds United 3-0 Wolverhampton: Premier League Match Report

Leeds United 3-0 Wolverhampton was two goals up at the interval and three by the end, with a clean sheet across both halves. For a Leeds side who had scored twice in their previous four matches, three in one afternoon was a departure; for Wolverhampton it was another day in a season that had stopped producing surprises.

Leeds went in 15th on 36 points from 32 matches with a goal difference of -10, six points above the bottom three and playing the kind of fixture that decides whether a spring is nervous. Their recent record had been all margins and no goals: 0-1 at home to Manchester City, 0-1 at home to Sunderland, 0-0 at Crystal Palace, 0-0 with Brentford, and a 2-1 at Manchester United as the exception.

Wolverhampton were bottom on 17 with -34, nineteen points behind Leeds and coming off a 0-4 at West Ham. Their five preceding results contained two wins — 2-0 over Aston Villa and 2-1 against Liverpool — which is the strange feature of their season: a side capable of beating anyone occasionally and losing to everyone the rest of the time. Leeds had won the reverse fixture 3-1 at Molineux in September.

Leeds moved to 39 points and a goal difference improved to -7, opening the gap on the bottom three to nine points, before the rest of the round played out, with six rounds remaining and doing it with a margin that helped the tiebreak as well. Three goals and a clean sheet from a team who had managed neither for a month is the sort of afternoon that changes the mood of a relegation fight without settling it.

Wolverhampton stayed on 17 with the difference sliding to -37 — the worst in the division by three goals. Fifteen points behind 17th with six to play, they now required a run of results their season had never come close to producing. They had now conceded four at West Ham and three here in consecutive away trips, and Leeds had beaten them by two clear goals for the second time this season.

Our pre-match call was Leeds United Win at 1.75. It came in, and the margin was more comfortable than the reasoning deserved. We backed a home side above the relegation line against the bottom club and took the 3-1 from the reverse fixture as the guide. The awkward part was Leeds's own scoring — two goals in four matches before this — which made a win bet rather than a handicap the right instrument, and even that looked shaky. Wolverhampton had beaten Aston Villa and Liverpool inside the same month, so the price was not free money. It just played out as though it were. Verdict: won