'Mental' - Portsmouth star makes Leeds United admission with 'deserved' Whites outcome view
A Portsmouth ace has made a Leeds admission on the back of Saturday’s 3-3 draw at Elland Road.
Portsmouth star Callum Lang has made a Leeds United admission - and felt his side “deserved” a result at Elland Road.
A January signing from Wigan Athletic, Liverpudlian forward Lang helped himself to a brace in Saturday’s Championship opener at Leeds and his stoppage time penalty looked to have given Pompey all three points.
Despite a host of chances for dominant Leeds, Lang coolly slotted a 92nd-minute spot kick past Illan Meslier to put Portsmouth 3-2 up having earlier put his side 2-1 ahead with a rocket of a strike as the Whites looked to clear a corner.
Leeds, though, who had 22 attempts at goal, ultimately ‘rescued’ a point via a 95th-minute equaliser from Brenden Aaronson who even had a chance to bag an even later winner only to slide his one-on-one attempt wide.
Speaking to Portsmouth publication The News, 25-year-old Lang admitted his side rode their luck at Leeds - yet felt his side looked dangerous at times and ultimately deserved their result at Elland Road.
Hailing the away end scenes as “mental”, Lang declared: “Going over to that away crowd, you can’t really beat that feeling. It was going a bit wild and all my family and friends are in there going mental.
"To be fair sometimes it makes me a bit jealous - I want to get in there myself. I think I would have done that actually, but I was on a yellow card already! It’s an amazing feeling but we now have to keep that work we put in going."
Lang added: "As an XI that group has not played together. There’s new faces coming in and it’s been different teams and 45 minutes here and there. It’s been a bit mixed up.
"So you don’t really want to read too much into it, you just want to get as much work out of it as you can.
"We’ve had a tough pre-season and in Croatia we put a lot of miles in."We have to carry that on and we showed that we can do that. There’s a lot of sides with quality and we just have to match the intensity of them.
"We definitely did that against Leeds. Maybe we rode our luck a little bit at times, but we deserved to come away with something. I think that gives us some confidence and is something we should take away from this game."
Speaking to the club's website, Lang declared: “You never know what to expect from the first game of the season and it was a crazy, hectic one. When it started to calm down a bit and we were able to play our football, we began to look dangerous.
“It was a nice feeling to see the first goal go in. I hit one in training the other day and just thought that if I got the opportunity during the game, I’d take it. We were gutted not to come away with the win in the dressing room afterwards – and that says something in itself.
“When you come to a place like this, you have to ride your luck at times, but we all worked for the team-mate next to us on the pitch.
“The gaffer spoke to us before the game about playing with confidence because we’re here for a reason. People will know that we’re not going to be an easy side to play against and now we’ll look to carry on this hard work.”