Habib Diarra’s decisive penalty for streetwise Sunderland sees off Leeds

Last year Sunderland departed West Yorkshire on a snowy February night with their hopes of automatic promotion from the Championship in tatters. Leeds had come from behind to clinch a 95th‑minute win that would take them top of the second tier and only the most optimistic visiting fans expected a rematch this season.

Fast forward to a balmy March evening, though, and Régis Le Bris’s well‑executed gameplan lifted an injury hit yet streetwise Sunderland and their debutant goalkeeper Melker Ellborg to 11th in the Premier League.

Who could seriously have ­imagined last ­February that, thanks to Habib ­Diarra’s second‑half penalty here, the eventual playoff winners would be on 40 points, nine ahead of Daniel Farke’s team now?

Diarra and co arrived very much in containment mode and were not exactly averse to indulging in a little time-wasting as they slowed the game down at almost every opportunity. It is no exaggera­tion to say that Le Bris’s players devoted the evening to protecting Ellborg and frustrating Leeds fans in equal ­measure.

“We defended really well,” the Sunderland manager said. “To win at Leeds means a lot. It was an intense game without oxygen.”

Farke seemed commendably sanguine after watching his side mono­polise the ball but fail to do enough with it. “We were so dominant, we had so much possession, but we knew we would face a very compact, competent Sunderland,” said the Leeds manager, who refused to be drawn on suggestions Ellborg had faked ­injuries. “They are smart. It’s difficult to explain how they won but we lacked a little bit of concentration in the final pass. It’s really frustrating.”

Ellborg, a £3m January arrival from Malmö, was deputising for the hamstrung Robin Roefs. His teammates happily ceded plenty of posses­sion to Leeds but their ­positioning off the ball was so ­suffocating that, bar expertly ­turning an Anton Stach free‑kick around a post, Ellborg had surprisingly little to do.

Enzo Le Fée is Sunderland’s ­brightest creative talent but, with the left‑sided midfielder’s evening spent largely in intelligently industrious ­tracking‑back mode rather than picking defence‑splitting passes, the Leeds goalkeeper, Karl Darlow, was even less involved than his Swedish counterpart.

Like Farke, Sunderland’s manager had arranged his side in a 3‑4‑2‑1 formation. With the excellent Dan ­Ballard ­directing operations from the heart of a back three also featuring the similarly impressive Luke O’Nien and Omar Alderete, Dominic ­Calvert‑Lewin’s hopes of recapturing his free‑scoring form of a few weeks ago were thoroughly stifled.

Le Bris’s tactics forced Leeds to play far too directly for their own good and they rarely managed to pass with any real sort of pace or incision.

Ten minutes into the first half, though, Sunderland altered course. On came the captain, Granit Xhaka, and the arrival of a player who serves as the team’s equivalent of an ­air‑traffic controller in central midfield prompted a switch to a back four and a slightly more attacking approach.

Granit Xhaka came off the bench for Sunderland in the second half. Photograph: Richard Sellers/Allstar Picture Library Ltd/Sportsphoto

Not to be outdone, Farke introduced a second striker in Lukas ­Nmecha and, almost immediately, Leeds thought they had taken the lead. Perhaps inevitably, that ­ultimately disallowed effort came from a set piece and featured Stach’s free‑kick being headed beyond a wrong-footed Ellborg and in off the bar by Joe Rodon. Yet, as a video assistant referee intervention confirmed, Rodon was around a yard offside and it did not stand.

Instead Sunderland soon won a penalty when Ethan Ampadu was judged to have blocked Wilson ­Isidor’s shot with his arm. Given the ball deflected off Ampadu’s knee, Leeds fans were incandescent, but a VAR review and a trip to his pitchside monitor helped the referee, Stuart Attwell, to decide the midfielder had deliberately guided the ball to safety.

Up stepped Diarra and, although Darlow got a hand to the Senegal midfielder’s spot-kick, he could not hold it. “In games like this you always have one or two opportu­nities,” Le Bris said. “And we took ours.”