Patrick Bamford refutes Leeds United claim from 'freak' Whites occurrence with perspective call

Bamford's 50th goal in a Whites shirt had relegation-battling Leeds on course to move five points clear of the drop zone on Sunday as his 19th-minute header gave the initially dominant hosts a 1-0 lead against visiting Crystal Palace.

Eagles keeper Sam Johnstone produced a series of excellent saves to prevent the Whites from adding to their tally and Leeds were then undone at the other end in first half stoppage time as Marc Guehi beat Illan Meslier to a loose ball to convert from close range after a Palace free-kick.

Leeds then completely collapsed after the interval as Palace ran in four more goals without reply to condemn Leeds to a 5-1 defeat that left the Whites fifth-bottom and just two points clear of the drop zone with eight games left to play.

United's goal difference has also been dented but Bamford was keen to stress where Sunday's game sits in the grand scheme of United's season as a whole and gave short shrift to a question over the mental effects of the battle to stay up.

Pressed on whether mistakes were now getting to the players mentally more given the nature of the relegation fight run in, Bamford reasoned: "Not necessarily. I think that just sometimes in games, everything seems to collapse and sometimes everything that can go wrong, does go wrong.

"In there (the dressing room), I don't want to say we were upbeat because obviously we have just lost 5-1. But we understood that one game like that is not going to decide our season so we have got to bounce back and just go for the next game now."

Leeds will return to action next Monday evening with an Elland Road showdown against a Liverpool side who currently find themselves in eighth place. Leeds were on course to jump up from 16th to 12th after Bamford's header put the Whites 1-0 up against Palace yet Javi Gracia's hosts ended up on the back of a 5-1 blitz.

"I think it was one of them where in the first half we were really good, we probably should have been a few goals ahead," said Bamford. "They had a couple of chances at set pieces but we managed to keep them to that because we knew that players like (Michael) Olise and (Eberechi) Eze are good players when you give them time.

"The second half kind of fell apart a bit and it was a freak result in the second half but one that we will move on from. I said before the game that one game doesn't decide it so it wasn't the be all and end all but it was disappointing but we move on."

Asked what he felt was at the centre of the collapse, Bamford said: "I just think they scored the second goal to go ahead and then the third one came really quick. They punished us for mistakes we made and at this level if you make mistakes, most of the time, you're going to get punished and it was just one of those games where every mistake we made literally got punished in the one half."