LEEDS rampant, Charlton recumbent. Both managers did their best to explain what had happened, which was a 6-1 away win for Leeds, yet Charlton’s abject surrender and Leeds’ utter domination were still baffling — at the end they so nearly scored a seventh goal when Mark Viduka struck the top of the Charlton crossbar from a chance easier than those he had so devastatingly put away.

“Crisis, what crisis?” Leeds might have asked themselves. Both Peter Reid, in only his second game in charge of Leeds, and a despondent Alan Curbishley, manager of Charlton, agreed the die was cast from the very beginning. As Curbishley grimly reflected, Charlton couldn’t even get out of their own half for the first nine minutes. These were minutes in which Leeds forced a succession of corners so that when the goals began to go in, it was only what could have been expected.

Charlton’s pitiful defence could do nothing with Alan Smith and very little with Viduka or Harry Kewell.

“Better to have Viduka, Smith and Kewell in your side than against you,” mused Reid.

And Smith? “I wouldn’t like to play against him. He turns people, he brings people in to play.”

This indeed he did throughout the time that he was on the field. He gained a penalty, he set up two of Viduka’s goals and inevitably he had a few abrasive moments, incurring a lecture from the referee.

“They certainly put their all in today,” Reid reflected. “Harry Kewell started on the left but I wanted him, when we had the ball, to go and express himself and it worked today.”

It surely did. Kewell, with a bold run, initiated Leeds’ first goal after 12 minutes, finding Viduka, his fellow Australian, who sent in Smith from the left, giving Kewell the easiest of chances.

The second goal came just after the half hour when Richard Rufus brought down Smith. Viduka wanted to take the penalty but it was Ian Harte who thumped it home with his formidable left foot. In the second half, when Luke Young fouled Smith, Viduka got his way, scoring Leeds’ fifth from the spot.

Their third goal came just before half time. Smith’s neat header found Viduka with time to score with a low right-footer.

Almost at once, out of the blue, Charlton got a penalty when Lucas Radebe fouled Scott Parker. With Charlton’s first real shot of the game, Jason Euell sent Paul Robinson the wrong way.

Charlton brought a couple of substitutes on at half-time but it soon became business as usual.

A skilful run by Smith, a pass to Viduka on his left, instant execution, and it was 4-1.

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