Boro’s worst fears realised as Becchio proves his value

YOU sense that the turkey and fine wine will have gone down rather well at Leeds United’s annual members’ Christmas party on Saturday night.

A five-course meal and disco was held in the Centenary Pavilion following the Middlesbrough game – with United players and management in attendance.

While the former will have had to forego the festive excesses with a busy programme ahead, there will have been plenty of opportunity for the rest of the clientele to raise a glass or two at the end of a seminal week in the club’s history.

The day after GFH Capital completed their buy-out of United, the new owners watched Neil Warnock’s troops claim a keynote victory against worthy opponents in a festive cracker of a contest viewed by Elland Road’s biggest league crowd of the season. It was for occasions like this that they came to West Yorkshire.

Despite the wretched weather, it was a proper footballing Saturday at LS11, with the pre-match mood expectant among both sets of supporters, who backed their respective teams in commendable numbers and with passion in an atmospheric afternoon. Not always the way at ER this season...

It was certainly a far cry from the respective fixture between the two rivals at Leeds last term, when a pre-match demonstration from United fans against the reign of Ken Bates made for a poisonous afternoon on August 13, 2011, where the vitriol was rife and the mood decidedly ugly and mutinous.

On the pitch, that infamous day was not helped by the card-happy antics of referee Andrew Taylor, who dismissed a trio of players, three of many to receive their marching orders in a traditionally combustive clash over the decades, with one of that number including a certain Tony Mowbray.

Thankfully, this time around Taylor’s counterpart, Paul Tierney, commandeered a steady ship in a game where the commitment from both sides in rain-sodden conditions was unstinting but never over the top.

Having been usurped by Hull City as the top team in Yorkshire following the Tigers’ Friday night exploits at Derby County, Boro set about reclaiming the accolade with a sell-out contingent of 3,000 travelling down from Teesside, including a fair few dressed in Father Christmas outfits.

More bad Santas by the final whistle; grumpy ones at any rate.

It may not have been quite a ghost of Christmas past that came to haunt Boro, but it was a familiar adversary in the shape of Luciano Becchio, who just loves to dine out at the Teessiders’ expense.

He was the man Boro feared, with Mowbray – tentatively linked with a move for the Argentinian last season – ruefully acknowledging his class and status as a ‘top player’ in his disappointed utterances in his after-match press conference.

Defeat was tough on Boro, who deservedly drew first blood as reward for their controlled football in the first period through Lukas Jutkiewicz. But while they undeniably possessed the polish, it was Leeds’s pragmatic approach which won the day.

Unflatteringly and unfairly labelled by some sections of the national press as ‘Boring Boro’ when under the guidance of former Whites legend Jack Charlton in the mid-70s, it was more a case of Blunt Boro on Saturday.

A steady stream of chances came and went and while Jutkiewicz converted one of them to put the Teessiders ahead, he was wasteful regarding others, it being left to the goalscoring king of Elland Road Becchio to show him how it was done.

His timing was impeccable with an exquisite and instinctive leveller moments before the interval illuminating a sodden and dank West Yorkshire afternoon, evoking memories of his televised stunner at the Riverside in United’s 2-1 victory in Gordon Strachan’s last game in charge of Boro in October 2009.

More was to come, much to Boro’s chagrin, with his 73rd-minute headed winner, aided by the slightest of deflections, taking his haul against the Teessiders to five in four matches.

Boro laid siege in their quest for a leveller but it was Leeds’s day. Just.

As it also was in a festive game at Elland Road just under a quarter-of-a-century earlier, when United triumphed 2-0 to down Bruce Rioch’s buoyant Boro, who had the last laugh by achieving promotion via the play-offs at the end of 1987-88 with Mowbray their on-pitch leader.

Leeds, who enjoyed high-profile Christmas home wins over Boro and Bradford City in front of an aggregate attendance of just over 70,000, saw their season meekly peter out.

With new owners in harness, the portents look fairer for United 25 years on and they and Boro, on this evidence, have plenty to look forward to 2013.

What price North Riding vs West Riding in the Championship play-offs, come late Spring?