Leeds United boss provides huge 23s praise and Man City reaction to record Elland Road crowd

Taylor's young Whites took on defending champions City in their final home league game of the season on Friday night and a crowd of 21,321 flocked to Elland Road.

The turn-out shattered the record attendance for a Premier League Two contest which had stood at 17,525.

That total was set by Everton at Goodison Park in April 2017 for a Merseyside derby against Liverpool in which the Toffees celebrated winning the title.

Five years later, City were crowned 2021-22 champions through Friday night's 3-1 win against Taylor's relegation-battling Whites courtesy of strikes from Kayke Da Silva, Cole Palmer and Liam Delap.

Leeds, though, had taken a sixth-minute lead through Mateo Joseph and Taylor was proud of the way his side stood up to the best young team in the land whose manager Brian Barry-Murphy was "astounded" with the size of the crowd.

"You think you've seen a lot in football over the years, reserves [et cetera]," said Taylor.

"That to me is incredible having over 20,000 for a 23s game on a Friday night.

"It just epitomises this club really and since I've been here, I've been astonished every other week.

"I was speaking to their manager before the game, he said 'Tayls, why's there so many fans here, what's the occasion?'

"I says 'just because we've put it out there and we've said 'yeah, come along''.

"I said we've had big crowds for a lot of the other U23 games and we sort of said, 'alright, how many can we get for the last home game?' We end up getting this many.

"He's astounded. And that's the manager of the Man City 23s. He'd been a manager in the Football League before that.

"And he's coming here to Elland Road for a 23s game going 'bloody hell, it's amazing', so all credit to the fans.

"I think before the game, I did say to the lads, 'look, this is going to be as close to a Premier League game without being a Premier League game'.

"You've got two good teams, Man City.

"You've got good players, Elland Road, 20,000 fans, and both teams need a result, so it's a great experience for the lads.

"They're sort of experiencing first team football but in our control so it was good."

Reflecting on his side's performance, Taylor beamed: "Really good, really proud. I've just said to them in there, [I'm] proud of the performance, proud of their attitude, proud of the way they approached the game and how we kept going.

"Yes, be disappointed we've lost the game, that's natural.

"You're going to be disappointed but as soon as we walk out of this dressing room, I want them to walk out with their heads held high because they deserved that, they've put on a great performance. We went toe to toe with the champions now in our league.

"And I think for a large part of that game if you were neutral and didn't know who was who, you wouldn't know who was at the top and who was near the bottom."

Taylor was also asked about referee Andrew Miller's decision to only issue City 'keeper Cieran Slicker with a yellow card when bringing down Crysencio Summerville outside the box when the Whites were 2-1 down.

Pressed on whether Slicker should have been sent off, Taylor said: "Potentially. It could have been, on another day, you get that decision.

"But I think that was just the way that the first half went.

"We pressed them, we got the early goal which was great and it would have been better for us to just see out 10-20 minutes being one-nil up.

"Before you know it, you blink and you're 2-1 down and that's a good lesson for our lads as well to go, you know what, when you playing against very good opposition, you can get a goal and just take your foot off the accelerator, that small percentage, because good teams will punish you."

Leeds United under-23s: Klaesson, Sutcliffe, Cresswell (C), Kenneh, McCarron, Jenkins, Bate, Gray, Summerville (Miller 65), McGurk (McKinstry 72), Joseph. Unused substitutes: Van den Heuvel, Allen, Mullen.

Manchester City under-23s: Slicker, Oduroh, Charles, Mbete, Galvez, Lavia, Kayky (Gyabi 68), Palmer (Bobb 45), Delap (C), McAtee (Borges 84), Edozie. Unused substitutes: Lewis, van Sas.