18th August 2025. EFL Premier League.
Wow! What a night at Elland Road. We all knew that teams like Everton coming to town would be our best chance of adding points this season. What we didn’t know was whether we had strengthened enough to make that a possibility. As it happens, in our first challenge, we totally dominated an Everton team that the Guardian described as “timid at best”, I couldn’t think of a better description of their performance and hopefully that was more because of our efforts than their lack of quality.
In the first half, Leeds pressed relentlessly, showed good attacking intent and worried the Toffees with numerous decent corners. With the height that we now have in the side this ought to be a good source of chances as the season develops – let’s see how we cope at the other end against the corner specialists, Arsenal, next Saturday night. Leeds kept England’s number one Jordan Pickford busy throughout the first half – Joel Piroe spinning and firing from close range as early as the 7th minute – while Dan James was unlucky to see an instinctive stab at the ball send it over the bar and Willy Gnonto rasped a left-footer inches over. There wasn’t much blue on the first half charts.
David Moyes reckoned Everton were better in 2nd half but I can’t say I noticed it that much. Leeds continued to look the more eager to go forward while Everton started to take an age over any stoppage – although we held our breath a few times when Lucas Perri held the ball too close to eight seconds on a few occasions! Someone please remind him about the new rule!
Willy Gnonto fired into the side netting early in the second half and Perri had to make his first serious save down at his near post but did it well. Perri generally looked confident and solid apart from one first half ‘moment’ when he miss-controlled the ball and took it over the byline, fortunately not spotted by the officials. Only on one occasion did we get beaten in the air near our own goal – O’Brien heading over from six yards. Even the arrival of Jack Grealish on the pitch didn’t really inspire the Toffees, Leeds were simply too bright for them.
Some commentators reckon the penalty was harsh on Everton but, for me, it was a clear handball. If his arm had not been there the ball would have hit the target and his arm was only there because he leant towards the ball. As others have said, it was written all over Tarkowski’s face that he knew what he’d done. I’m sure everyone was nervous for Luka Nmecha when he stepped forward but what a penalty that was! As clean a strike as you could wish for, giving Pickford no chance even though he guessed right. I’m not sure Lukas knows how big that goal is for Leeds, to have missed the spot-kick would have had us all thinking it was the old ‘cursed’ Leeds and not this new, bright, optimistic one, not to mention how it might have blunted Lukas’ confidence.
Leeds dominated this game, as we must try to dominate every game against any of the 11 teams likely to be occupying the spaces in the table behind the top 8. If I had a criticism, it is only that we failed to hit the target with more of our 21 attempts on goal. Just three times did we test Pickford although the Toffees only worked Perri the one time. This was a performance to give us all encouragement that we might just break this trend of promoted teams going straight back down. Incidentally, Sunderland did their bit too this weekend – this was only the third time in Premier League history that two promoted sides have won on the opening weekend and remember, last season, it took until October for one of the promoted sides to win a game. The other two didn’t win until November!
Great start Leeds, great start!
Premier League
Leeds United 1 (Nmecha pen 84’)
Everton 0
Leeds: Perri (GK), Bogle, Gudmundsson, Ampadu (C) (Gruev 78’), Struijk, Rodon, James (Harrison 78’), Piroe (Nmecha 78’), Stach, Tanaka (Longstaff 90’), Gnonto (Aaronson 67’).
Subs not used: Darlow (GK), Ramazani, Bornauw, Byram.
Everton: Pickford (GK), Keane, Tarkowski (C), Beto, Ndiaye, O’Brien, Dewsbury-Hall, Alcaraz (Mamdou Barry 86’), Gueye, Garner, Iroegbunam (Grealish 71’).
Subs not used: Travers (GK), Tyrer (GK), McNeil, Chermiti, Coleman, Armstrong, Onyango.
Referee: Chris Kavanagh
Booked: Iroegbunam, Alcaraz (Everton)
Venue: Elland Road
Attendance: 36,820
