Many people said Patrick Bamford was not cut out for the Premier League. Many people reckoned Aston Villa were about to climb to the top of the table for the first time in nine years. All those people were made to look idiotic as Leeds ran Villa ragged here and clinched victory thanks to a wonderful hat-trick by their centre-forward.
That sent Marcelo Bielsa’s team to third place in the table and took Bamford’s tally for the season to six goals from six league games. His previous 27 matches at this level had yielded just one, and his strike rate in the Championship was patchy. “I am very happy for him,” said Bielsa of Bamford. “There have been no significant changes [to how he plays], it’s just that now he is being more efficient.”
