Leeds United star provides industrial scale joy in cakewalk - Graham Smyth's Huddersfield Verdict

Daniel Farke recently revealed he would celebrate a good win with a slice of cake on the sofa and for 45 minutes against Huddersfield Town his men produced the footballing equivalent of having the finest baked delicacy, eating it and leaving no crumbs.

A belly-full of first half goals sated every Elland Road appetite so perhaps it was no huge surprise that the second half was like a post-feed nap on the sofa. Even if Farke wanted his men to be greedier and add to their 4-0 lead, he also wanted them to manage the game and finishing up 4-1 did little to dampen the enthusiasm of his full-time praise.

Conceding a second half goal and failing to reproduce the scintillating football of the first 45 minutes meant it was not quite a perfect afternoon but this is the Championship, where perfection rarely exists. To escape this division, its relentless schedule and unpredictable nature, you have to be better than it and a couple of days prior to this game Leeds looked every inch a Championship side at Stoke City. What they did in the first half against Huddersfield was so far beyond the Championship that Leeds resembled a dot on the horizon to Darren Moore's players - especially his defenders.

Farke rang the changes, reintroducing Jamie Shackleton in order to rest Archie Gray, replacing Ilia Gruev with Glen Kamara and bringing Crysencio Summerville and Daniel James back into the starting line-up.

The Terriers came to do a Sheffield Wednesday, sitting in with a compact shape and in the earliest minutes it took runs past the last man from Kamara and James to get Leeds into promising positions. In response Huddersfield countered and created a half chance for Delano Burgzorg but they were soon completely and utterly under the cosh as Leeds found their rhythm.

Joel Piroe had a goal chalked off, Summerville had a shot deflected wide by what looked like an arm and then Georginio Rutter realised he with visiting right-back Tom Edwards in his pocket he could just pass the ball to himself on the flank and get into dangerous areas.

It was on the right that Rutter popped up to start the move for the opener, all the way back near his own penalty area, clipping a nice ball over the top to send Summerville away. The Dutch speedster found his Welsh counterpart on the right and James added a composed finish.

Moore looked back on what happened next as the moment where the game or at least Huddersfield's opportunity to make it a game, slipped through their fingers. Burgzog got in behind Shackleton and as he shaped to shoot a flying Joe Rodon took the ball away and took the force of the shot.

After that Summerville cut in from the left, as is becoming his trademark, and curled low through a forest of legs to add a second and confirm a long old afternoon for Moore.

Three minutes later it was 3-0 and James had his second, finishing off calmly after Rutter's touch in his own half was picked up by Summerville who once again raced away into the clear. Twice Huddersfield ventured out to try and attack and on both occasions they were stung by Leeds' pace and precision on the counter, making it impossible to know what they could or should try next.

When they weren't kicking themselves for conceding three so early on they were kicking Leeds players and taking yellows that left a number of them on tightropes against a team well equipped to play at pace and draw contact. Some of the stoppages for those fouls or treatment to players like Ethan Ampadu contributed to five minutes of stoppage time that Leeds fans did not want to see come to an end, adding an olé to each pass in a passage of play that saw possession retained for an age.

And just when Huddersfield thought it might be safe to assume the first half pain was coming to an end, Kamara twisted sharply to play forward, found Rutter and his one-two with Sam Byram unlocked sufficient space to get to the area, find Summerville and let the winger do the rest.

The half-time whistle almost brought the house down, Leeds players jogging off to a deserved ovation having performed outstandingly against an admittedly poor opponent. Moore went down the tunnel knowing he would have to park two buses to stop it from getting any worse.

That and Farke's preference for protecting players - Rodon came off after feeling something in his hamstring, followed by Summerville and Byram too just in case - meant that things didn't get any worse for Huddersfield, but they didn't get much better. Even their goal, from Michał Helik after Illan Meslier failed to hold a long-range effort, did little to raise spirits among the visiting players or their travelling support.

If you really wanted to you could nit-pick about Joel Piroe's struggle to really get into the game and create, or the inability of substitutes to take the baton from those who sprinted through the first half and keep up with that electric pace, but no one of a Leeds persuasion would have turned down a 4-1 win in a derby were it offered up before kick-off. Performances like those produced by Summerville and Rutter in the first half are to be enjoyed, relished and re-lived, not taken for granted or glossed over. Rutter has gone eight games without a goal now but he’s got Summerville and James adding the end product to his work, and his dribbling and passing ability is delivering joy on an industrial scale. For 45 minutes plus stoppage time it was a cakewalk. That taste should linger.