Green: Now bring on Chelsea

Green turned his attention to a “tasty game” at Elland Road after claiming the second goal in a valuable Championship victory against Ipswich on Saturday.

The midfielder’s 68th-minute strike secured a fourth win in five league games for Leeds and set the club up for a mouth-watering meeting with old rivals Chelsea.

The teams are preparing to go head-to-head for the last remaining place in the Capital One Cup semi-final draw and United are bidding to emulate the upset caused by Bradford City in their quarter-final win over Arsenal last week.

Chelsea have endured a troubled season and their squad were making the long journey back to England from Japan today after losing in the final of the FIFA World Club Cup.

They will face a crowd of more than 35,000 at Elland Road and Green said: “We know what it’s going to be like. We have to be ready for them.

“Every game we play in we want to win. We’ve beaten some Premier League outfits here and not many teams like coming to Elland Road to play Leeds United. That’s what it might be like on Wednesday.

“We have to take heart from the way Bradford played against Arsenal. They (Arsenal) had a fairly strong outfit out and anything can happen.

“It’s going to be great to play against a big team like Chelsea. I’ve played Arsenal, Man City and Man United but never Chelsea. It’ll be a tasty game because there’s a bitter rivalry there.”

The clash with Chelsea has fallen in a crucial week for Leeds, with prospective owner GFH Capital due to complete its 100 per cent buy-out of United on Friday.

GFH Capital employees David Haigh and Salem Patel, both of whom are joining the board at Leeds, were present on Saturday to see Green’s goal seal a hard-earned win and help United recover from a poor defeat at Derby.

“After last week’s match at Derby it was an important result,” Green said. “It wasn’t pretty at times but you don’t get pretty games in the Championship. We did really well to dig it out.”

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