20th September 2025. English Premier League.
Well, that was a result to settle the nerves, wasn’t it? It didn’t look likely after eight minutes, mind, that was when Wolves passed their way through the Leeds defence with such ease that I thought it might prove to be a very long afternoon indeed! Did they catch us cold? Or was it a case of ball watching? No one tracked the run of Krejci until it was far too late.
Wolves had other pops at goal in the first half, but Leeds dominated the possession to the tune of 56 per cent and, when opportunities presented themselves, we took full advantage, with three players who have arguably underperformed lately, all showing their true worth in very different ways.
It was, in my humble opinion, the best performance we’ve yet seen from Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who was supreme in the air all afternoon; in attack, defence and in winning the ball from long goal kicks. It’s been a long time since we had anyone in the team who could do that regularly. And it was DCL who levelled the game just after the half-hour mark. Jayden Bogle curled a long ball into the area from the right touchline. It took a bit of a deflection, looping towards the back post, and there was DCL, leaping like the proverbial salmon between two Wolves defenders to knock the ball perfectly beyond the grasp of Jose Sa. DCL has that Ronaldo-esque ability to just hang in the air at moments like that.
The Wolves fans had been cock-a-hoop when Krejci opened the scoring with his debut goal, but the mood changed dramatically when we levelled, and then all their early jubilation completely subsided eight minutes later. A noisy Molineux is a fearful place, a quiet one far less so.
It was the experience and craft of DCL that won a soft free-kick for Leeds when challenged by Krejci about 28 yards from goal. Up stepped Anton Stach and we finally saw why he’s been taking the majority of our set pieces! Not since Giuseppe Bellusci hit a similar one at Bournemouth a few years ago have we seen such a perfect strike. This one arrowed perfectly into the top right corner.
Still, we weren’t finished though, and next it was Anton Stach doing the other thing we expect of him, intercepting a wayward pass out of defence by Wolves, midway in the home half. Anton strode forward and then stroked the ball into the path of Noah Okafor, running in from the left. Noah hit the ball low with his left foot, first-time across the keeper into the corner of the net. Dreamland! Three players, each scoring their debut Leeds goals, and perhaps answering those questions about exactly where our goals are expected to come from this season. I always thought the criticism about our failure to score this season was being made without giving due consideration to the quality of the opposition we’d faced; all four of our previous opponents have settled in the top half of the Prem; Wolves was the team, a team with zero points this season, that we needed to show our goal-scoring capability and we did just that. One swallow and all that, but we can now see where goals can come from.
Wolves made changes at the break, in both personnel and formation, and that, together with Leeds’ seemingly settling for the 1 – 3 scoreline, meant we had to ride our luck a bit in the second half, a half in which Wolves dominated the possession to the tune of 69 per cent. For me, Leeds defended way too deeply and we therefore invited Wolves to bombard us with cross after cross throughout the second period; thankfully though, a combination of poor Wolves delivery and finishing, and solid work from Leeds in the air, kept the home side’s chances to a bare minimum. They did muster 10 second-half shots to just a solitary one from Leeds, and three hit the target, one well saved again by Karl Darlow (has he now pushed Perri down to second choice once he’s fit again?), but they didn’t create a single ‘big chance’ for all their possession. It was a thoroughly professional and error-free performance from Leeds’ eleven-man defence.
So, three vital points, vital in stretching the gap between us and Wolves to seven points already. We have two very tough-looking home games coming up, against Bournemouth and Spurs. If we can get something from either of those games, then we can start to dream about beating the promoted sides’ curse!
Premier League
Wolverhampton Wanderers 1 (Krejci 8’)
Leeds United 3 (Calvert-Lewin 31’, Stach 39’, Okafor 45’)
Wolves: Sa (GK), J. Gomes, Agbadou, Arokodare, Mosquera (Andre 72’), R. Gomes (H. Bueno 46’), Toti (C) (Arias 72’), Bellegarde (Munetsi 46’), Lopez (Strand Larsen 46’), Krejci, Tchatchoua. Subs not used: Johnstone (GK), S. Bueno, Hwang, Hoever.
Leeds: Darlow (GK), Bogle (Justin 83’), Gudmundsson, Ampadu (C), Struijk, Rodon, Longstaff (Tanaka 83’), Calvert-Lewin (Nmecha 90’), Aaronson (Gruev 90’), Stach, Okafor (Harrison 70’). Subs not used: Meslier (GK), Piroe, Bijol, Gray.
Venue: Molineux
Attendance: 30,807 (3,012 away)
Referee: Anthony Taylor
Booked: Lopez (Wolves) Bogle (Leeds)
