Leeds United needless nerves and key consideration — Graham Smyth's West Ham Verdict — YEP 25/10/25

By Graham Smyth

The Verdict on Friday night’s 2-1 huge win against Premier League visitors West Ham is in.

Leeds United will not celebrate an uglier win all season but they might not have a more important one.

There was some debate beforehand as to whether or not Friday night's Elland Road meeting with West Ham United was a must-win game.

But if you cannot beat West Ham at home, then who can you beat?

Having lost to Burnley, if the points aren't coming against the Hammers then where are they coming from?

It's not quite as simple as that, not when you've had what Daniel Farke described as a hellish week of illness and injury as your preparation.

This season is all about doing enough. Doing just enough. Staying up, by the smallest of margins if that's all they can muster. Staying up, by whatever means necessary.

What Leeds produced on the night was enough to beat West Ham 2-1, so it was good enough. Just park that thought for now.

Getting off to a good start was of paramount importance, not least because a number of Farke's most important players were either under the weather or coming back from injury.

That was why Noah Okafor started rather than coming off the bench for the second half. Farke wanted to put his best foot forward.

Brenden Aaronson still started on the right wing, because Farke wanted at least one fully fit wide player.

That thinking did not go down particularly well prior to kick-off and it won't go down particularly well in the future but it worked a treat on Friday night.

With three minutes on the clock, Ethan Ampadu stormed through the gaping holes in the West Ham midfield, Aaronson found Jayden Bogle and his cross was headed at goal by Okafor.

When Alphonse Areola made a save, Aaronson was where he so often is, in exactly the right place and unlike at Burnley this time he did the right thing and scored a goal.

Hitting the front was almost a non-negotiable against a visiting side with next to no confidence, form or momentum. Get their heads down early, worsen their mood.

Doubling the lead on the quarter hour mark made it the perfect start.

Lucas Perri's smart stop from Jarrod Bowen's overhead kick kept it to 1-0 and then Okafor's backheel sent Gabriel Gudmundsson away and he won a corner.

Raising his arms to whip up the crowd, the left-back clearly sensed Leeds were in a moment and everyone needed to seize it. The Sean Longstaff-Joe Rodon combination took over.

Longstaff's corner found the centre back's head for the umpteenth time this season and the ball was buried in the back of the net. At this point the Hammers were ready to fall, teetering on the edge of a right royal hammering.

The Leeds players knew it as much as anyone in the ground. They won a throw-in just seconds after the second goal and Bogle was frantically hurrying a ballboy so he could restart play quickly.

Things went from bad to nightmarish for the visitors, who lost Oliver Scarles to a shoulder injury. Nuno sent on Callum Wilson and went with two up front.

That just opened them up further for Leeds to play through. Dominic Calvert-Lewin teed up Ao Tanaka and he fired over. Gudmundsson dug out a cutback and Aaronson was foiled as he shaped to shoot in the middle of the area. There was a third goal for Leeds just waiting to be scored and then a rout was on. It's never that easy though, not with this club.

West Ham had the ball in the net and for 10 seconds or so celebrated a goal for Lucas Paquetá before a flag finally went up. The VAR deliberation over whether he was or wasn't offside took far longer but reached the right conclusion and it stayed 2-0.

With the game so open there was always the chance that West Ham's talented frontline could haul themselves from the sludge the rest of Nuno's team were producing and Leeds needed a foot on the ball.

They got one, from Ampadu, yet he found the allure of a forward run irresistible, beating three men and making it all the way to the edge of the box before his left shooting boot deserted him entirely.

The space afforded to the hosts brought further forward forays and chances. Aaronson's cross almost found Calvert-Lewin. Okafor almost found the far corner after cutting inside.

Aaronson found Bogle and he was denied by a good save. A little more composure was all that was needed to kill the game.

Farke, though, was concerned that marauding forward on the counter was going to be Leeds' undoing, so things changed at the break.

Okafor came off because he had to and Jack Harrison came on. Leeds settled into a more compact and disciplined structure, but it gave them no real control of the ball or the game. It did allow them to comfortably defend, it just sucked most of the fun out of the game.

When the hosts did attack in the second half, Aaronson seemed central to it all. He took pelters after the Burnley game but he was making his critics look as silly as West Ham defenders as he left them in his wake at times. The highlight of his work, beyond his goal, was a run from deep in Leeds' half that ended in a shot deflecting onto the crossbar.

The final 20 minutes was attritional stuff and a far cry from the way it all started earlier in the evening.

Leeds defended so many balls into the box, Premier League debutant Jaka Bijol and Rodon heading almost everything away. They were under the cosh but not conceding chances.

But letting West Ham have so much of the ball and spend so much time in forward areas always carried a risk.

All it took was one decent cross, a lapse in concentration allowing Mateus Fernandes to waltz into the box and his glanced header beat Perri.

Suddenly, in the 90th minute, Leeds were defending a one-goal lead and everything was far nervier than it needed to be.

Had West Ham conjured up an equaliser it would have been an unforgivable collapse from Leeds. That the visitors did not manage it allowed the victors to write the history.

An important win. Digging in for victory. Moving seven points clear of West Ham.

Playing like this won't be enough to beat better teams, of which there are many in the Premier League. The Whites will have to be much better in the coming weeks.

Their goals summed it up. Okafor was able to win a header in the box, Aaronson was first to react and he had a huge amount of net to hit but still so nearly found the keeper. He found the net, so no one cared on this occasion.

Paqueta's marking for the second goal would have made the Spurs steward from that viral video blush.

The West Ham man thought about following and challenging Rodon but the thought never left his brain to inform his body and he simply watched as the Welshman nodded home. It will take more to score goals against better teams.

The second half was ugly and for a team who had their visitors on the ropes in the first half, it wasn't a great look to be so defensive and inviting so much pressure. 'How did it come to this?' was a natural reaction to West Ham getting a goal back and making it closer than it ever should have been.

Context is key, however. What it needed to beat West Ham was what Leeds came up with, despite all the disruptions suffered in the build up to the game.

They had to win, they did win and they move on.

Wins are all-important and Leeds now have three of them after nine games.

At this stage last season neither Southampton nor Ipswich Town had a single one between them.

Who really knows if Leeds will be good enough come the end of the season to stay in this league, but tracking at more than a point per game is good enough. Good enough is good enough.