Wilson and Pereira seal Fulham victory to leave nervous Leeds looking down

Handed the task of untwining the tight tactical binds left by Marcelo Bielsa and Jesse Marsch, Javi Gracia briefly looked like the man to arrest Leeds’s decline, only for his team to concede a familiar deluge of goals. Letting in 18 goals in five games in April for a return of just three points now pushes the Spaniard to the top of the next manager-to-be-sacked odds market.

Two highly preventable goals from Harry Wilson and Andreas Pereira, both after goalkeeping errors from Illan Meslier, condemned Leeds to a nervous weekend watching their relegation rivals after proving themselves incapable of stopping the rot.

This was a second win in a row for Marco Silva – like Gracia, a graduate of Watford’s managerial meat grinder – as he returned to the dugout after serving a two-match touchline ban for the incident that has robbed him of Aleksandar Mitrovic’s services until the last week of the season. Instead the hulking Serbian goal machine sat in the old Cottage pavilion near Fulham’s owner, Shahid Khan.

Leeds, in an away kit featuring bile-orange shorts, made three changes from their 6-1 defeat to Liverpool but their bench, which included Patrick Bamford, Luis Sinisterra and Wilfried Gnonto, looked more talented than the starting XI. It was left to Crysencio Summerville to add zip.

There were limited highlights in an opening half in which Fulham lacked a focal point and Leeds took suspiciously long over set pieces. Such conservatism was understandable for a team that had lost all five of their visits to London this season. A point might have been of some use in their battle against relegation, while keeping a first clean sheet since 25 February would be more than welcome.

Fulham lay in patient wait for the type of mistake