Leeds United 1-1 WBA: Running out
The fear of a promotion race is always about future regrets, that if these two lost points aren't hurting on a sunny day, they might come back with a vengeance some bleak afternoon to come.
The fear of a promotion race is always about future regrets, that if these two lost points aren't hurting on a sunny day, they might come back with a vengeance some bleak afternoon to come.
It's not always how you start but how you end, in football, but you have to work hard to make sure the last goal is important, and yours.
Pascal Struijk was wearing the most enormous unmovable grin you'll ever see on a footballer. A lot of football had to happen over a long time for that smile to get that wide.
Confidence breeds confidence but this form must be inspiring a contagious 'oh no' in the rest of the Championship that gives Leeds an advantage before they have to do another thing.
Sometimes all the FA Cup becomes is a game against Millwall, again, too soon. But football matches still form their own entities and so the players picked to play could take to the pitch with heroics in mind.
Leeds United either did or didn't get what they wanted from the transfer window, and your perspective might have influenced how unhinged you felt as kick-off approached in Coventry. Personally I felt like I was going insane.
Seven. It wasn't an audacious backheel by Billy Bremner and as an aesthetic experience Firpo-to-forward on repeat can't quite compete with 1972. But on its own terms this was a perfect goal, it made a perfect seven, just give all the players a perfect ten and worry about the details in Coventry.
If Expected Sexy was a metric the Championship would not score highly and Burnley's pride in all their clean sheets would hit different.
At Elland Road, the Peacocks were giving the Canaries every chance to play fair. Well, apart from the scoring after thirty seconds thing, but in some ways that was a kindness.
All this hard work and nothing more than a single point of comfort at the top of the table: that's football at its reassuring, familiar, painful best.