Leeds Thrash Newcastle 4-1 to Climb to Third, Hand Jaissle His First Defeat

A ONE-SIDED FIRST HALF

Leeds United needed less than 45 minutes to settle this one. Ao Tanaka's shot took a heavy deflection off Newcastle's Lewis Miley and looped in for an own goal to open the scoring, before Jayden Bogle and Dominic Calvert-Lewin added further goals to send Leeds in 3-0 up at halftime at Elland Road on Monday night. Noah Okafor made it four in the 59th minute, and although Bazoumana Traore pulled one back for Newcastle deep into stoppage time, it did nothing to change the shape of the result.

LEEDS INTO THE TOP THREE

The win extends Leeds' unbeaten start to the league season and lifts Daniel Farke's side up to third in the Premier League table, an eye-catching position for a club that came up from the Championship. Farke called it one of the club's best performances in the last 12 months, describing the display as top-class for more or less the entire game, while still keeping his side's title-race talk in check.

"One of their best performances over the last 12 months," Farke said. "Top-class performance, more or less during the whole game."

A ROUGH NIGHT FOR JAISSLE

For Newcastle, the result was a first taste of defeat for Matthias Jaissle, who took over at St James' Park in August after Eddie Howe's departure. Jaissle is still working with a young, retooled squad, and Monday's loss was the sharpest reminder yet of how far off the pace Newcastle were on the night. His message afterward focused on using the result as a lesson before Newcastle's next fixture on Saturday, rather than dwelling on the scoreline itself.

WHAT'S NEXT

Leeds will look to back up the result against sterner opposition as the table starts to take real shape through September, while Jaissle gets his first full week on the training ground to address a defense that conceded four before the hour mark. For a Leeds side many expected to be fighting relegation after promotion, a top-three finish to this stretch of fixtures is the kind of early-season signal that will keep getting attention as long as results like this one keep coming.