Staff at Leeds have been reluctant to hype up Archie Gray, wary of putting too much pressure and expectation on a Year 11 pupil who was celebrating turning sixteen on Saturday. As if his family tree didn’t make it difficult enough, by the time Gray was appearing on the bench of a Premier League fixture at the age of fifteen, he must have been known by every scout in Europe. Victor Orta didn’t help, comparing watching Gray for the first time to the same “what’s this?” sensation of seeing Sergio Aguero at a South American Under-20 championship.

Like a teenage NME subscriber convinced their mates’ band are the next big thing, Orta wanted to be the first to publicly predict stardom. “I want to be the first person on La Media Inglesa,” he told the podcast of that name, “since in five years’ time you’ll be talking about this guy non-stop and I want to be the first. I already had the answer prepared yesterday, I want to say the name of Archie Gray, our youth team player.”

If Leeds are still wanting to control expectations over Gray, then they’re going to have to keep Orta away from microphones for a while. How can Orta be expected to stay reasonable when Gray came off the bench in Leeds Under-23s’ 3-0 win over Scum at Elland Road, controlled a panicked clearance from Scum goalkeeper Ondrej Mastny in a similar spot from where his great uncle Eddie lobbed Burnley’s ‘keeper over half a century ago, and did this:

???? "You beauty! Archie Gray take a bow!" pic.twitter.com/MOOdhg9VdU

— Leeds United (@LUFC) March 15, 2022

Look at it! Get excited! Forget that there’s no ‘keeper. Remember how Stuart Dallas froze in the penalty area when he had an open goal against Spurs, or how Adam Forshaw lacked the confidence to shoot into Tim Krul’s empty net against Norwich. Gray had the composure to take two touches, noticing the four defenders between him meant he couldn’t just kick the ball towards the net. The kid doesn’t simply put the ball in the goal, the brilliant little scamp puts it right into the corner! Gray slid in front of the East Stand, joining some other children celebrating wildly, although he may have just been arranging where to meet them before double geography in the morning.

If Red Bull is the future, this was more like the Boost equivalent of the 1993 Youth Cup final: a decent crowd at Elland Road, a dominant performance from Leeds, and even the appearance of a Savage in the Scum team, Robbie’s son Charlie coming on in the second half.

‘I don’t exactly know who that blonde-bobbed centre-forward was trying to impersonate, but if he was aiming to be a complete wanker, he was spot on,’ Eddie Taylor wrote of Savage Sr in The Square Ball back in 1993. That role was reprised not by Savage Jr, but Hannibal Mejbri, Scum’s €10m teenager who has already won eleven senior international caps for Tunisia. It didn’t take long before Mejbri was being reminded that ‘Sideshow Bob is fucking shit’ by almost 10,000 fans inside Elland Road. These nights are valuable experiences not just for the young players learning to play in front of a crowd — the attendance was higher than two fixtures in League One on the same night — but the young fans being treated to a cheap ticket and early kick-off on a school night. If it wasn’t for Gray’s goal, abusing a Scum player with a Simpsons reference would have been their favourite bit.

Leeds were taking turns fouling Mejbri, who has already honed the Scum habit of sulking and trying to do everything himself. He eventually had a strop and squared up to Max Dean, nudging his head towards the striker with the type of not-actually-a-headbutt that once got Eunan O’Kane sent off at Ipswich. Dean screamed at the referee asking for a red card, but couldn’t bring himself to go down pretending he was actually hurt. He got his own back in the second half, cheekily tripping up Mejbri off the ball, by which time the midfielder had already been at fault for Leeds’ second, giving the ball away under pressure from Gray before watching his nemesis Dean finish from Sam Greenwood’s pass.

It was an impressive night’s work from the kids, who were helped by some more recognisable names now Leeds’ injury list is (whisper it quietly) starting to shorten. Jamie Shackleton, Charlie Cresswell, Lewis Bate, Crysencio Summerville and Greenwood all started, meaning Leeds weren’t going to be physically bullied like some of the younger kids have been in recent months. Jesse Marsch was there watching, swarmed by giddy children in the West Stand until he’d taken a selfie with every one of them, and the U23s played with an energy suggesting they were desperate to impress. Stuart McKinstry’s carefully placed finish into the far corner put them ahead after ten minutes, and they never looked like losing from that moment on, even if Kristoffer Klaesson needed to make a couple of reassuring saves.

Nine minutes after Gray scored the final goal of the night, Scum’s first team were conceding against Atletico Madrid to get knocked out of the Champions League. It was a fitting conclusion to a day that started with reports Scum might have to knock down Old Trafford entirely rather than redevelop the existing stadium. There are plenty of Leeds fans no doubt willing to help, although Scum’s supporters might be picking up their pitchforks once again with their owners having already played the ‘spend loads of money and bring back Cristiano Ronaldo’ card to placate them last summer. Hopefully they were paying attention to events at Elland Road and learned a valuable lesson. It doesn’t matter how much they spend, money can’t buy Eddie Gray’s genes. ⬢