Leeds boss Daniel Farke dismissed the club’s poor play-off record after his side’s faint automatic promotion hopes were dashed on the Sky Bet Championship’s final day.
A 2-1 defeat to Southampton at Elland Road proved immaterial as Ipswich secured a top-two finish with an expected home win against Huddersfield.
Joel Piroe cancelled out Adam Armstrong’s opener for Southampton, who regained the lead before half-time through Will Smallbone to leave Leeds in third, one place above the Saints.
Leeds have never won promotion via the play-offs in five attempts, but after the last-day results left their fans fearing the worst, Farke did not lose his sense of humour.
He said: “You know how my record is in the play-offs? I never lost a game – because I’ve never played in the play-offs by the way.
“It doesn’t matter. Leeds have lost in the play-offs before, but it was a completely different group, I was not in charge, so it doesn’t matter.
“Obviously we are here to change it. That’s the reason why I’m here.”
Leeds slipped to a fourth defeat in six games during an untimely drop in form that allowed champions Leicester and Ipswich to finish in the top two.
Farke’s side made a slow start to the season following relegation and were 17 points behind Leicester at the turn of the year before a 15-game unbeaten run catapulted them in automatic promotion contention.
“If you said we’d finish on 90 points in third position, it wouldn’t be the worst,” the German added. “Yes, the last couple of weeks it doesn’t feel like this in this moment.
“But in two days we will feel excited. It doesn’t matter what happened before. It’s a completely different group, different people.
“We want to achieve something special here and doing this perhaps by being there for the first time in history with a good play-off outcome, yes I would take it.”
Leeds could yet pay a high price after defeats to Coventry, Blackburn, QPR and Southampton during the run-in, but Farke said: “I don’t feel we’ve thrown it away.
“Yes, it felt that with a better run-in it was possible, but to be honest, I think the reason why we are not in the top two is not the last four weeks, but the first two months.”
Southampton halted a three-game losing streak by rediscovering their best form before facing West Brom in the first leg of their play-off next Sunday – Leeds will play at Farke’s former club Norwich on the same day.
Saints boss Russell Martin said: “I really enjoyed lots of the performance.
“Some of the football we played was fantastic in the first half, maybe we could make more use of the openings we had.
“There was a bit of tension in the players after a tough week last week. Losing three on the bounce is not easy.”
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