Leeds United 4 Birmingham City 0: Smith and Austin hail fine team display
YEP 21/10/13by Phil Hay
Rodolph Austin and Matt Smith acknowledged a fine team performance after their goals against Birmingham City helped to lift a veil of negativity from Elland Road.
A brilliant header from Austin and two clinical finishes from Smith rounded off a 4-0 win over Birmingham City as an under-pressure Leeds United side returned to form in compelling style yesterday.
United shook off criticism stemming from a run of five league defeats from seven previous matches to dismantle Birmingham with their biggest Championship victory since November 2011 and climb up to ninth in the table.
Manager Brian McDermott made key changes to his side by adopting a 3-5-2 formation and giving Smith a full league debut up front as he tried again to resolve the shortage of width and goals which contributed to his side’s mediocre results.
Austin followed up Ross McCormack’s early finish with the decisive touch at the end of a fine attacking move, and Smith struck late in either half to seal a heavy win at Elland Road.
Austin said: “It was a great display by the team and we’re very thankful for the win.
“We needed it badly and you could see that the boys were hungry for it.”
McDermott refused to talk about United’s chances of competing for promotion this season but Smith said: “That puts us up to ninth and it’s important to stay in or around the play-offs.
“It’s important that we give ourselves a chance and hopefully this can kick-start a run for us.
“When you play for a club like Leeds United, expectation is always immense but we need to focus on our next game now. That’s the way the manager likes to view it.
“I’m delighted with my performance but also with the way the team played. We needed the points.”
McDermott’s system was a notable break from other formations used by him and he went further in his overhaul by recalling Scott Wootton, Luke Murphy and Sam Byram and leaving Paul Green and Noel Hunt out of his squad completely.
Byram and Stephen Warnock were used as wing-backs to impressive effect and McDermott said: “We wanted to get some width. “My teams have always had width and anyone who watched my Reading side will know that.
“I don’t know if I’ll stick with (the formation) but I felt it was right today.
“We set that back-five up against Rotherham in a behind-closed-doors friendly on Tuesday and we looked really good. We’d been working on that for 10 days, we haven’t just gone into it.”
McDermott held a lengthy meeting with his players before training on Friday morning to discuss the failures of the past month and underline the importance of a period in which Leeds play Huddersfield Town, Yeovil Town and Charlton Athletic.
“We spoke about mentality and needing a winning mentality,” McDermott said.
“You can’t go into games just to play the game. The reason you’re at this level is to win and the more games you win, the more you learn how to win.
“The last six or seven games were tough because we didn’t get the results we wanted and we need to know why that happened. It’s a sin if you don’t know why. Today we know why we won. You can all talk about the play-offs but I’ve got no interest in doing that. I’ve done this all my career. There’s no point looking forward, and what’s gone is gone.
“We’ve had a good day but that’s all it is. There were 105 points to play for and now there’s 102.”