The race for the Championship title went right to the last few minutes, but Leeds snatched it from Burnley’s grasp with an injury time winner to beat Plymouth Argyle.

Promotion might have already been secured, but there was still the all important issue of whether we would have the Football League trophy to parade on the open top bus tour tomorrow. Thousands of Leeds fans swarmed into Plymouth to find out, and although things got rather lively at times, there was no repeat of the trouble that marred our similar trip to Bournemouth in 1990.

There was once change to the starting line-up, with Firpo’s injury meaning that Sam Byram was in to deputise. We knew that we needed to win to be certain to take the title regardless of Burnley’s result, and started the game on the front foot. Our first chance came when a free kick from Solomon was headed straight into the keeper’s hands by Byram.

But after a quarter of an hour there was a scare at the other end when Bundu went past three of our defenders to work his way into position for the shot, which clipped the outside of the post on it’s way out for a goal kick. We failed to heed the warning, and soon after the same player made Argyle’s goal.

Argyle intercepted a poor ball from Solomon deep in their own half, and Palsson quickly sent a long ball was quickly played out to Bundu on their left. Taking advantage of our tactic of Bogle overlapping well up the field, the winger was able to run down the wing unchallenged, before getting past Rodon to shoot, and this time the ball bounced back into play off the post.

Byram was unable to get out of the way in time as the ball cannoned into him, and the ball bounced into the net. One wag commented on social media that were unlucky that Firpo wasn’t playing, as he would have been out of position, so he wouldn’t have been there to score the own goal.

We responded by putting the Plymouth defence back under pressure, but it looked like it could be one of those days when we struggle to break down what is now known as a ‘low block’. Bogle fired a ball across the six yard box straight at Piroe, but this time the ball looped over the bar of a Leeds player.

Byram sent the ball across the face of goal, but Hazard got a vital touch before Bogle could pounce on it, and the Argyle keeper also made a good save from Aaronson’s shot from the edge of the area. Otherwise in the first half we were reduced to shooting from distance, with most shots going well over the bar. Aaronson being the culprit on more than one occasion.

But we increased the tempo in the second half, and got back on level terms in the 53rd minute.After a series of passes outside the area, Solomon went down the left and sent the ball across the face of goal, which eluded Hazard but found Gnonto waiting to pounce as the ball came through to him.

The first of the subs saw Wöber coming on for Byram, either because Byram was running out of puff, or because the official club website has finally found an umlaut so they can spell Wöber correctly. Soon afterwards we thought we’d gone in front, when Gnonto crossed and the ball was bundled over the line by Piroe from close range, but it was ruled that Gnonto had been offside when he received the ball.

Certainly he hadn’t been in an offside position from the original pass from Solomon, so it was a question of whether Bogle had flicked the ball on. The linesman decided he had. With the news that Burnley had come from behind and were now beating Millwall, Daniel Farke knew it was time for his tactic of throwing as many forwards on as he can.

Bamford and Ramazani came on for Aaronson and Tanaka, the latter struggling a bit after getting his foot stamped on. We continued to press but there was an anxious moment at the other end when Hardie found space in our area to turn and shoot. But thankfully he didn’t get the shot to curl as much as he needed, and it ended up going quite a long way wide.

As we moved into injury time Joseph came on for Bogle, so god knows what formation we were meant to be playing then, but it worked, as we finally managed to get through Argyle’s tiring defence for the vital winning goal.

Rodon moved to take a free kick quickly, and Gnonto played the ball to Solomon. Our favourite Israeli jinked past two defenders and curled the ball inside the far post to send the away section of the stadium into ecstasy. As he ran towards the corner he took off his shirt and sports bra in celebration, and dummied that he was going to take his shorts off as well!

But there was still time for Plymouth to snatch an equaliser, with the referee adding on a couple of minutes from the time taken up for our goal celebration. Katic had couple of headers in front of goal, but didn’t meet either of them correctly, and our lead survived. And soon after we did get the final whistle, and the celebrations could begin!

In truth this proved to be a much tougher game than the league table suggested, as Argyle have improved since they sacked the hopeless Wayne Rooney and might have stayed up if they’d made the change earlier. Sheffield United lost at Home Park a few weeks ago, so it’s a measure of the quality of our side that we were able to dominate this game as much as we did.

Daniel Farke looked strangely quiet as the post-match party began, which hopefully wasn’t because he’s been given any unfortunate news about his job. He’s more than earned the right to lead us into the Premier League, and although there’s a lot of work to be done before next season, for now we can all celebrate and look forward to tomorrow’s parade.

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