UK Edition
Kemar Roofe gives Leeds play-off advantage as Derby furious at overturned penalty decision
Derby County 0 Leeds United 1
The zest with which Marcelo Bielsa’s team tore Derby apart in a 4-1 win on this ground last August must have been seemed like a fading dream to the Leeds fans who had watched their side stumble through the final weeks of the regular season. Yet their vision of a return to the Premier League for the first time in 15 years may yet not turn to dust after all.
In a feisty tie that carried the lingering bitterness of the ‘Spygate’ affair, spiced up further by the controversy of a penalty awarded to Derby and then withdrawn, a 55th-minute goal by Kemar Roofe, his 15th of the season, has given Leeds a slender advantage to take back to Elland Road on Wednesday.
The penalty that wasn’t came 13 minutes from the end when referee Craig Pawson saw a foul by Jack Harrison of Leeds on Derby’s Jayden Bogle and pointed to the spot. But then, with Leeds players in his ear, he consulted his assistant on the line and changed the decision, giving a free kick to Leeds.
It stuck in the craw for Frank Lampard, the Derby manager, although he was magnanimous enough to concede that Leeds had been the better side.
“It was like VAR but without the computer,” Lampard said “When I saw it I thought it was one that could go either way but once the ref gives it, he is the boss on the pitch and when he then consults his linesman you think there must be some big information that the rest of the stadium hasn’t seen.
“But I don’t think there is, in which case the referee’s decision is the one that counts. With VAR it is about clear and obvious decisions that get overturned but I don’t think this was a clear and obvious mistake.
“Maybe the referee has been influenced by the Leeds players but that is when a referee has to be strong.
“But having said all that I don’t want this to be about the referee. These are tough games and we were not at our best today. Leeds are a good team and they finished above us in the league for a reason.”
Leeds had arrived in the play-offs in arguably their worst form of the season, having taken only a point from their final four matches of the regular programme, a bitter blow after spending almost 75 per cent of the campaign in the automatic promotion places. But if they were jaded, if they were feeling at all flat after the disappointment, it did not show.
“It was painful for us not to be promoted automatically but we said to the players that we must value having a new opportunity,” Bielsa said. “Apart from the first minutes and a spell of about 15 minutes in the second half, we dominated the game.”
He was cautious about predicting a trip to Wembley, however. “The result gives us an advantage but not a decisive one and if you take as a reference what has happened in the last Champions League games we can draw no conclusions.”
The decisive goal came 10 minutes into the second half, after Pawson played advantage after Tom Lawrence had committed a foul on the halfway line, allowing Harrison to steam down the left flank before delivering a perfect ball in behind the Derby defence for Roofe, who scored three times against these opponents in the regular season, to drive confidently home beyond Kelle Roos’s reach.
How the teams lined up
Derby County (4-1-2-3)
Roos; Bogle, Keogh, Tomori, Malone; Johnson; Holmes (Bennett 70), Mount; Wilson, Nugent (Marriott 64), Lawrence (Huddlestone 86). Substitutes not used: Carson (g), Jozefzoon, Evans, MacDonald.
Leeds United (4-1-4-1)
Casilla; Ayling, Berardi, Cooper, Dallas; Phillips; Hernandez, Forshaw (Shackleton 23), Klich, Harrison; Roofe (Clarke 81). Substitutes not used: Peacock-Farrell (g), Brown, Strujk, Gotts, Bogusz.
Referee: Craig Pawson (South Yorkshire).
Bookings: Derby: Lawrence, Keogh, Holmes, Huddlestone. Leeds: Berardi, Cooper, Klich.