Northampton Town 2  Leeds United 5

Leeds were out of sight by half time in this FA Cup tie, thanks to some quality finishing by Beckford and some woeful defending by the hosts, but despite the comfortable victory, we should still be concerned by our own frailties at the back. 

Macca made six changes for this game, but we still fielded a fairly strong starting eleven. Lucas was back in goal, Hughes played at right back while Frazer had the night off, and it was no surprise that Delph was also rested after his call-up for this week’s England Under 21 game, with Prutton coming into midfield.  Kilkenny also started, the two wingers were left out and Beckford returned up front, but one surprise was that Malcolm Christie was in the side, having just signed for the club on a non-contract basis.  

Leeds started brightly, but as in the first game it was Northampton who made the first decent scoring opportunity. But this time they didn’t manage to sneak an early lead against the run of play, as Lucas made a fine save after Davis cut in from the left and tested him with a fierce right foot shot. Instead we took the lead a minute later with a well-taken goal from Beckford, who controlled Prutton’s through ball with his left before finishing decisively with his right. 

Northampton had a couple of chances to equalise with shots from Holt and Gutteridge, but Leeds went further in front with a fortunate second goal in the 28^th. minute. Howson played a neat one-two with Christie just outside the area and his shot took a big deflection off the hapless Mark Hughes, crawling over the line after Fielding had already dived the other way. 

But at this stage the Cobblers still weren’t out of it, and Mc.Gleish headed just wide while Lucas pulled off another fine save from Jackman’s free kick.  But Northampton finally sensed it wasn’t their night when our third goal went in four minutes from half time, and this time Fielding had no one to blame but himself. Parker ran through and hit a fierce left-foot shot  from at least 25 yards, which Fielding allowed to slip through his grasp into the net.

It looked as if Northampton had given themselves a lifeline when Crowe pulled a goal back (taking advantage of some slack marking to send his header between Lucas and Kilkenny on the line) but Leeds still had time to restore the three goal advantage before the break. 

Beckford chased a long ball down the left and dispossessed a Northampton defender in the corner, before cutting in towards the box. He seemed to have too narrow an angle to make anything of it, but he brilliantly curled a fierce right foot shot beyond Fielding and into the far corner. While this was going on Douglas was lying injured after making the challenge that started the move, and for a while it looked serious, but eventually he staggered to his feet and was able to continue. 

By the start of the second half Northampton started to look deflated, and Beckford completed his hat-trick ten minutes after the break. Kilkenny sent him clear with a superb through ball, and the big man simply dummied the keeper before rolling the ball into the net. After that the pace of the game dropped a little bit, and the Leeds end amused themselves by chanting “Can we play you every week?” at the sparsely populated home sections of the Sixfields stadium. And yes, we are going to play them again next week, which is nice. 

We could have run up a cricket score, but instead Mc.Allister declared, by giving his strike partnership a rest so that someone else could have a go. Although Christie didn’t get on the scoresheet he showed some neat touches on his debut, while Beckford received a sporting round of applause from the home fans, who recognised that his brilliant performance had been the difference between the two sides. Becchio and Showumni came on, and although the latter was working pretty hard, he never quite caused the same buzz of excitement as Beckford in full flight. 

Our third and final substitution saw teenager Johnathan Webb coming on for the old man Telfer, but even with the change of personnel we still managed to look rather too frail at the back, with Northampton getting a second consolation goal as the game moved into injury time. And again it was down to a lack of marking, with Crowe having another free header after a corner was flicked on.  Hilariously, the scorer then ran to get the ball out of the net, as if they could have scored another three goals in injury time, but somehow Leeds managed to hold on to claim a 5-2 victory.

It might seem a bit churlish for me to be moaning about the defending after such a comfortable win, but we did concede two goals once again, and we can’t rely on Beckford to score a hat-trick in every game, nor to be gifted two other goals through luck and poor goalkeeping. And our marking will have to be better to cope with an aerial bombardment from Histon, who play a primitive style of football even by conference standards. But at least we can savour this win for the moment, even though our nerves will no doubt be shredded by the end of our lunchtime visit to Cambridgeshire on Sunday week.  

Photo: Action Images

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