Daniel Farke had sat through a grim northern drama of a match, an exercise in downbeat realism as he tried to shelter himself from the teeming rain in the Turf Moor dugout. He then showed a nice line in understatement. “I wouldn’t say it was the most sexiest piece of football,” he reflected. “I can’t say it was an unbelievable advertisement.”
And yet there was an accuracy to it. This is the Championship, a division where ambition and attrition collide. The biggest game of the Football League season staked its claim to be the dullest, the number of goals matching the number of shots on target until Dan James’ 89th-minute half-volley was tipped over by James Trafford. At its end, Leeds had marched a little closer to the Premier League, Burnley nudged closer to a place in the record books.
