Friday night football is the feast of the day for Leeds United and West Bromwich Albion fans as the teams meet at 8pm, under the floodlights. Not only is the clash viewed in person at Elland Road, it will be viewed nationwide with the fixture selected for TV coverage on Sky Sports.
Ahead of the match, Ben Scott goes into the history of the fixture to recall a memorable match against the Baggies, from 1972.
Leeds have a healthy record of late in this fixture, the Whites taking all the spoils in the last three meetings on home soil. Most lately, Leeds closed out the 2020/21 season by beating WBA 3-1 and in March 2019 a 4-0 win was chalked up – both games were ones that former United hero Pablo Hernandez won’t forget.
In 2019, Pablo fired Leeds into the lead, also on a Friday night on TV, with less than a minute played. In 2021, it would be his last appearance in a Leeds shirt. Sandwiched between them, the Baggies also lost 1-0 in October 2019.
Our Memory Match though looks back into the 1970s, to an FA Cup tie on February 24 1973, when the Whites played host in the last 16 of the competition.
The bookies strongly favoured Leeds. Not only because of home soil and the attendance of 39,229 fans, but Don Revie’s aces were the current cup holders and the league fixture of this pairing had seen Leeds win by two goals to nil, Allan Clarke one of the scorers in that early season clash.
As fate would have it, he would bag the brace in this cup clash as again it was 2-0 for Revie’s side.
Leeds lined up on the day with a starting XI of all internationals. It was English marksman Clarke though who sniffed out two goals in just three minutes during the first half.
As many would have expected, Leeds began the match the stronger of the two, boosted by the welcome return of Scottish internationals Eddie Gray and Billy Bremner – the pair had missed several matches through injury and with Bremner offering his usual role of starting attacks with forward balls but also protecting the back line, that on the day was missing World Cup winning centre-half for England, Jack Charlton.
In his absence, though, Norman Hunter, Trevor Cherry and Paul Madeley all covered the centre-back role during the game and offered the Albion attackers like Tony Brown, Jeff Astle and Willie Johnston hardly any scraps to feed off. For David Harvey, keeping goal for Leeds, it was one of his less challenging appearances in a long association with the club.
With nearly half an hour played, the visiting boss Don Howe was probably hoping, after watching his team creating so little threat and Leeds not yet registering a goal, they could reach the interval scoreless.
Clever play by wide men Peter Lorimer on the right and Gray on the left, coupled with the movement and prowess of Clarke and Mick Jones spear-heading Leeds forward play, was a constant worry for Howe’s men. Clarke’s perseverance reaped rewards on 28 minutes. Lorimer crossed from the right and at the far post, it at first looked like goalkeeper Peter Latchford had snuffed out Clarke’s header, but he fumbled the ball, letting it come back into play. The instincts of Clarke came to fruition as he was still on hand to bury the ball into the net.
Only a couple of minutes had passed by when thanks once again to Lorimer, aided by Latchford’s poor handling and capitalised on by Sniffer Clarke, Leeds had a goal.
A long-range Lorimer shot was too much for Latchford to grasp and when the ball fell in front of Clarke at close range, he simply prodded in the second.
If the task of beating Leeds at Elland Road in the FA Cup wasn’t already a humongous one (January of 1969 the last time it had been done), Latchford’s miserable handling of the ball made it all but impossible.
The ever-keen goal-machine Clarke spent the rest of the tie chasing a hat-trick, while Jones tried his luck on occasions, but better handling and reflexes by Albion’s keeper saw an end to the goals.
The Baggies have only won twice at Elland Road since this cup clash out of 18 attempts. In the last five meetings, both at Leeds and the Hawthorns, Leeds have hit 14 goals, Albion only two. On Friday night, Daniel Farke’s willing side will hope they can secure the three points.
