Dirty Leeds come up smelling of roses I suppose I watched Leeds performance at Old Trafford in some kind of awe this afternoon, few teams if any go to the Theatre of Dreams and win, let alone a team from the third tier in the FA Cup 3rd Round. It was a very sweet moment for Leeds' fans who have been through the ringer in the past few years.

I found myself getting behind (dirty) Leeds from the couch and astonishingly you just could not see Man U scoring as the game went on. Beckford and Becchio made Wes Brown look like a 3rd Division defender. Howson impressed me and Leeds' back five coped admirably.

From our perspective a Leeds cup run has to interrupt their concentration on the league especially over the next few weeks with Tottenham on the horizon. Then of course Leeds' players were front and centre of the January transfer window today and Beckford's goal once the celebrations die down may come back to haunt estastic Leeds fans this month.

Meanwhile whilst no one was looking Norwich jumped over us into 2nd place yesterday after beating Wycombe away from home. It is the first time we have been out of the top two all season. Norwich and Leeds have been so consistent in recent months and it would take a miraculous endeavour for that to continue. They just have to slip up at some point with half the season remaining. We just to need to worry about ourselves and keep tucked in there ready to pounce.

Finally how freaky was Colchester's result yesterday? Managers always want to test themselves against a middling club from the next level and one can only wonder what Aidy Boothroyd made of yesterday's 7-0 defeat against managerless Preston, whose fans protested against Alan Irvine's surprise dismissal last week. "They got the deflections, a penalty that probably wasn't, but we can't make excuses," Boothroyd said with his fingers firming crossed before adding "it was a very, very, very poor performance."  ¶ 19:09