Leeds United's key promotion rivals suffer triple injury blow as boss declares points target

Leeds pulled three points clear in the Championship's second automatic place through Friday night's 3-1 win at home to leaders Leicester City but Ipswich Town moved back level with Daniel Farke's side through Saturday's 3-1 triumph at home to Birmingham City.

The Tractor Boys have now joined Leeds in sitting on 72 points but boss Kieran McKenna says the only aim is to amass as many more points as possible in his newly-promoted side's final 12 games. Ipswich, though, suffered three injuries in Saturday's success as Wes Burns, Nathan Broadhead and Conor Chaplin were all forced off, presenting what McKenna admitted would now be another challenge.

"I think you can safely say that’s the only disappointment on the day,” said McKenna as quoted by TWTD. “Wes looks like he’s strained his calf, Nathan probably strained his thigh and Conor was a heavy knock. We’ve had five games in 14 days and these boys are pushing to the maximum, so that will be another challenge for us now.”

Reflecting on his side's points tally, McKenna reasoned: "We don’t want to pause and stop too much because we want to get some more points on the board and get as many as we can. But somebody just said to me downstairs that we would have finished fifth in the league last year with that total.

“As I said on Friday, it’s the highest points total in a very long time by a newly-promoted team and it’s with a large majority of the players that we had here last year without spending an awful lot of money. It’s massive credit to everyone here, players, staff and the supporters for the atmosphere that we’ve created here at home, that’s made us a formidable team.”