LONDON: New Zealand international striker Chris Wood’s double helped Leeds United to a 3-1 win at Birmingham on Friday and keep the fallen giants’ dreams alive of a return to the Premier League after a 13-year absence.
The 25-year-old’s brace took him top of the Championship scoring charts with 22 goals.
Alfonso Pedraza, on loan from Villarreal, added the third for Leeds after Craig Gardner had briefly pulled Birmingham level.
Victory sees Leeds stay in fourth spot, 11 points clear of seventh-placed Fulham — the side just outside the play-off places — who have two games in hand and whom they play next Tuesday. The top two automatic promotion places, however, look beyond Leeds.
Newcastle, who play third-placed Huddersfield on Saturday, have a two-point lead over Brighton.
Leeds, whose points haul of 64 is their highest for six years, are seven points shy of Brighton, who occupy the second and last automatic promotion spot.
“I thought we were second best for the first 60 minutes,” Leeds manager Garry Monk told Sky Sports. “We had a lot of defending to do, but from that point on we took the front foot and got good goals at good times.”
The visitors opened the scoring with a delightful goal a quarter of an hour into the match.
A long ball from Luke Ayling found Wood, the New Zealander stretching out his boot and lofting the ball over Tomasz Kuszczak in the Birmingham goal.
The hosts were unfortunate not to go in level at the break after a stunning long-range strike by Robert Tesche rattled the crossbar with Robert Green beaten.
Birmingham started the second-half as brightly as they finished the first with Kyle Bartley having to clear off his line from Che Adams.
However they got a deserved equaliser just after the hour mark with Gardner scoring with a beauty from outside the box for his first goal for the club since the day they were relegated from the Premier League in 2011.
Within minutes, Leeds went back in front as Wood tapped home his 22nd of the season from a few yards out after being found by Kalvin Phillips.
The visitors had weathered the storm and went 3-1 up 10 minutes from time as impressive Spaniard Pedraza rifled home from the left hand side of the area leaving Gianfranco Zola’s position at the losers in some doubt with just two wins in his 16 games in charge.
— AFP
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