Cup run shows Leeds are back

Leeds are the surprise package of this season's FA Cup, having followed a 1-0 victory at Old Trafford with a deserved 2-2 draw away to Tottenham in the fourth round. After they suffered a dramatic fall from grace - from a 2001 Champions League semi-final to League One in 2008 - in the first decade of the 21st century, are we now witnessing Leeds' rebirth as a force in English football? Paul Hayward, writing in the Observer, seems to think so:

Beckford is the individual billboard star of this year's FA Cup and Leeds are the big romantic tale in a competition that squeals for our attention in a schedule crammed with Premier League and Champions League drama.

The Yorkshire revival is back on course. A draw and two defeats since the Old Trafford ram-raid had broken a sequence of 17 games unbeaten. Coincidence? A fair extrapolation is that the third-round win interfered with the team's ascent. Cup runs often work as a distraction for clubs bent on promotion. Mischievously, some of us wondered whether Simon Grayson's men motored to White Hart Lane thinking the best result would be a hiding.

If so they hid it well, as an early Tottenham onslaught subsided, and the 4,500 travelling fans proclaimed a first-half counter-surge after a torrid opening chapter. "We're not famous any more," sang the Leeds throng, subverting a chant many opposing crowds have tried to tickle them with since they plunged from a Champions League semi-final in 2001 to a league housing Yeovil and Leyton Orient.