HOW FAR HAVE LEEDS UNITED FALLEN, and how fast? On their way to the Champions League semi-finals only five years ago, they qualified from one group containing Barcelona and AC Milan, then another including Real Madrid and Lazio. This morning they sit top of a quartet comprising Watford, Crystal Palace and Preston North End — enough said. But the prize on offer is every bit as alluring.

A lot of money has flowed under Stamford Bridge since Leeds were being hailed as the next English superpower and a mountain of debt has had to be cleared at Elland Road since the days of rented fish in the boardroom and record losses on the balance sheet. But on Saturday the club who lived the dream — and nearly died a death as a result — took another step back towards competing in the Premiership when they forged their way to the summit of the Coca-Cola Championship play-offs group. And they have not finished yet.

Seventeen points adrift of Sheffield United at the beginning of November, Leeds are only six points behind their neighbours with a game in hand and a match to come at Bramall Lane on April 18 that could be for impossibly high stakes — the right to join Reading in earning automatic promotion — with the intriguing sideshow of Kevin Blackwell’s return to cross swords with Neil Warnock, under whom he learnt his trade.

But for the Leeds manager, whose contract expires in the summer, personal ambitions are very much secondary to his club’s. “Right now I’m not even thinking about the summer (and his own position),” Blackwell said after this victory over Palace, as emphatic as a 2-1 away win is ever likely to be, despite the closeness of the scoreline. “We have ten massive games left and if we keep winning, who knows?

“Thirteen months ago we were two days from liquidation and it has been a phenomenal turnaround — after years of downward spiral since the Champions League semi-finals it has been an unbelievable upturn. But every time you ask these players to do something they give a response.”

No one exemplified that attitude more than Sean Derry, who was returning to the club who deemed him surplus to requirements and did as much as anyone to stifle the creative life out of Palace from his position just in front of the back four. Delighted with the reception he received from the home team’s supporters and hoping that his former club can also return to the top flight, he was nonetheless insistent that he had made the right decision to move to a “bigger and better place ”.

“The fan base at Leeds is immense — everybody in the city is talking about getting back to the Premiership and if we can get Leeds up we will all be heroes,” Derry said. “Kevin Blackwell has restructured the club from bottom to top and we have gone on another level. Now it’s the money end of the season and I’m sure Sheffield United are looking over their shoulders. We are perhaps a season ahead of schedule, but now we are in this position we want to grab it with both hands.”

Leeds’s victory, their ninth in 13 league matches during a run that has produced only one defeat, seemed assured from the moment that Robbie Blake, on his 30th birthday, tapped in from close range in the 33rd minute, capitalising on a strong run from midfield by Kenny Miller and a low cross from the right by Rob Hulse that Fitz Hall, on a more assured day, might have cut out.

They had been denied the perfect start by Gabor Kiraly’s magnificent save, low and one-handed to his left, to keep out Jonathan Douglas’s fifth-minute header and from the first whistle were the brighter, more inventive and more disciplined team.

Miller also helped to create their second, prodded home from close range by Hulse in the 53rd minute, and although Jobi McAnuff fired in a spectacular reply as the match drifted into stoppage time, it was no more than a token gesture of defiance from a Palace team whose run-in includes a trip to Elland Road in a fortnight.

“We lost, so I take no enjoyment from my goal,” McAnuff said. They will need Andy Johnson, too easily nullified on Saturday, to rediscover his sharpest form if they are to achieve a record fourth promotion to the Premiership.