Dismal season ends with Derby County TSS May 2, 2014 Leeds United 41 Comments A dismal season for Leeds United ends at Elland Road tomorrow as The Whites take on a Derby County side who’ve already secured their place in the Championship play-offs. Derby have won the last ten consecutive games against Leeds making them our ultimate bogey team, but Steve McClaren has one eye on the play-offs and has already spoke of resting key players for a largely insignificant trip to Elland Road. Nevertheless, the bookies still have Derby County as favourites to beat Leeds. You can get odds of 7/5 on an away win, with Leeds’ odds of victory at 7/4. Rather unsurprisingly, the Championship’s top goalscorer Ross McCormack has the shortest first goalscorer odds at 7/2 followed by Chris Martin and Patrick Bamford at 5/1. The last time Leeds United won this fixture was in September 2005. The result that day was 3-1 courtesy of a Rob Hulse hattrick who, incidentally, will be at Elland Road tomorrow as a team of staff and ex-players (including Richard Cresswell) prepare to row across the English channel to raise money for charity. There’s not much team news to speak of for Leeds, Sam Byram and Alex Mowatt are out injured and Jimmy Kebe returned to Crystal Palace earlier this week. It’ll be interesting to see the starting eleven Brian McDermott goes with however as it could give some indication as to who’ll be here next season and who we’ll be trying to ship out in the summer. It’s been a bizarre season for The Whites. Optimism was at an extreme high when Luke Murphy’s last minute winner clinched three points against Brighton on opening day, but the new era GFH ushered in proved to be a false dawn and from a fifth placed position in December, Leeds quickly crumbled as takeover chaos took hold. There’s been highlights to this season, most notably the end of Ken Bates and the 5-1 hammering of Huddersfield Town, but there’s been plenty of lows to offset that. Transfer deadline day in January (or ‘Mad Friday’ as it’s now known) saw Brian McDermott sacked, Massimo Cellino’s taxi chased around Elland Road and Ross McCormack appear on Sky Sports News to issue a ‘come and get me plea’ to any managers watching on. McDermott was reinstated, Massimo Cellino’s takeover took a few more months to complete and Ross McCormack remained at Elland Road, but the chaos continued and Leeds’ form suffered so badly that the Whites went from play-off chasers to genuine fears of a relegation battle. Tomorrow won’t be a celebration of our achievements this season, but it will be a celebration that this season is finally at an end. When the final whistle blows at Elland Road, attention quickly turns to the transfer window Leeds’ new ownership is expected to be fairly active in and when August rolls around, we’ll get to do it all again with renewed optimism, unrealistic expectations and all the unpredictability of another season in England’s second tier.