Leeds United's Championship promotion rivals suffer 'huge pain' as old foes produce dramatic favour
Leeds United saw their early Championship promotion rivals drop points before hosting Coventry City.
Early frontrunners and Leeds United’s promotion rivals West Brom suffered a first defeat of the season at Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday.
The Baggies fell to defeat in dramatic fashion, initially recovering from a two-goal deficit late on before seeing all their hard work go to waste. Wednesday went into half-time 2-0 up before goals from Josh Maja and Alex Mowatt - the latter coming on 84 minutes - looked to have secured a point to keep West Brom’s unbeaten start intact.
But after giving up their advantage and seemingly two points, Wednesday rallied to do both of their Yorkshire rivals, Leeds and Sheffield United, an early favour. Anthony Musaba was the man to win it, getting on the end of Barry Bannan’s cross to finish from close range.
“The level of pain I and my players have is huge, as it is our first defeat,” Carlos Corberan admitted. “We weren’t ourselves in the first half. I think we played with too much respect. We need to analyse it and find solutions.
“You’re not always going to achieve the result that you want to achieve. Now it’s about a reaction. We’ll go again on Tuesday. We like to extend good moments, but today we couldn’t. The fact we have suffered one defeat shows us we have to put more energy into our next performance.”
Wednesday are just the second team to take points off West Brom so far this season, the other being Leeds in that drab 0-0 draw at the Hawthorns, and Corberan’s side will likely lose top-spot before the week is out. Elsewhere in the early kick-offs towards the top of the Championship table, Blackburn Rovers continued their excellent start to the campaign with a comfortable 2-0 win at home to Queens Park Rangers.
QPR went down to 10 men in first-half added-time and were made to pay the price, with Lewis Travis and Danny Batth on target for the home side. Rovers climbed into third-place on 15 points with that win, leapfrogging Burnley having played a game more.
Leeds are due at Norwich City on Tuesday evening and the Canaries came out the better of a controversial five-goal thriller at Derby County. Borja Sainz was the star man for Johannes Hoff Thorup’s side, scoring a hat-trick in the 3-2 victory at Pride Park, albeit his opener should not have counted with the ball going out of play during the build-up.