Leeds all but booked safety while Newcastle plunged to another home defeat on a decisive day in the EFL

From our weekend digest, Louise Taylor’s take on that huge game for Leeds.

Leeds are morphing from relegation contenders to reverse kingmakers with a key role to play in determining the identity of the teams that end up descending to the Championship. Thanks to Monday night’s fully merited 2-1 win at Manchester United – their first league victory at Old Trafford since 1981 – Daniel Farke’s 15th-placed side moved six points clear of the relegation zone with six games remaining. A win against rock-bottom Wolves at Elland Road on Saturday would lift Leeds to the virtual sanctuary of 39 points but it is just the first of four impending matches against the bottom four. With Burnley still to visit West Yorkshire and Leeds facing trips to Tottenham and then, on the final day, West Ham, Farke’s FA Cup semi-finalists will likely have a significant say in who finishes where when the top-tier music stops next month. Louise Taylor

During my 43-year adventure I saw pubs close, standing on terraces return and big flags fly all over the country

By When Saturday Comes

It was bound to end like this: a long and arduous odyssey that started in 1982 on a crumbling terrace culminated on a grey, drizzly afternoon in December watching my team get hammered 3-0 in a brand spanking new stadium named in conjunction with an international commercial law firm. A glorious away win thanks to a last-minute winner would have been somehow too poetic. This was how it was meant to be, when I finally completed the 92.

As with that game at Everton, most games were as an away Nottingham Forest fan; others as a neutral. There is much I witnessed and learned from this ludicrous yet wholly fulfilling enterprise and the many miles travelled. For one thing, it used to be that one displayed allegiances by carefully trapping a scarf in the window, so it fluttered outside all the way. This has been replaced by the executive car sticker or personalised number plate and our society is much the worse for it.

• Lincoln could be promoted from League One

• Live scores | Martin Ho interview | Talking points

Thanks John, afternoon everyone. I’ll start with a very modern story from Spain.

La Liga on Monday condemned threats and intimidation by Sevilla fans aimed at their own players and directors after they fell to a third straight league defeat.

Sevilla, 17th in the Spanish top flight, lost 1-0 away at bottom side Real Oviedo on Sunday and some supporters met the team at the airport on their return to insult them, while others wearing masks were at the club training ground.

Lincoln City moved to the verge of the Championship, Roy Hodgson made a winning return to the dugout, and Rino Gattuso’s time with Italy came to an end

Japan won last month’s Women’s Asian Cup in emphatic style: six wins out of six, 29 goals scored, one conceded. But yesterday they effectively sacked Nils Nielsen, the Greenlander who coached them to glory. Vanilla Ice was wrong: in football, it seems, sometimes even the best is a felony.

Nielsen’s contract expired at the end of the tournament and the Japan Football Assocation decided not to offer him a new one. Norio Sasaki, the women’s national team director, said Japan could not win next year’s World Cup if Nielsen remained in charge, describing his coaching as “a little too lax, a little too soft”.

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Wolves might have their four Gomeses but Sunderland are fighting back with a trio of Joneses.

Sunderland: Ellborg; Geertruida, Ballard, Alderete, Hume; Xhaka, Sadiki; Diarra, Rigg, Talbi; Brobbey