Leeds and former Norwich City boss Daniel Farke hailed a statement win in a 4-0 hammering of Championship promotion rivals Ipswich Town at Elland Road.

Farke was unbeaten in four East Anglian derbies against the Canaries' old foes and dished out the biggest defeat of Kieran McKenna's reign one week on from Town's failure to end a run of 13 unbeaten games for City dating back to 2009.

The German is also the only manager to have won at Portman Road in the league earlier this season.

Leeds' skipper Pascal Struijk’s early header, Leif Davis’s own goal against his former club and Crysencio Summerville’s penalty put Farke's latest side 3-0 up at half-time.

Joel Piroe added a fourth, while the Dutch forward and team-mate Georginio Rutter both saw shots hit the crossbar as Leeds closed the gap on second-placed Ipswich to seven points, and extended their unbeaten home run this season to 12 matches.

“To win three points is always priceless. That’s the most important thing. It was good also for our goal difference," said the German, who is bidding for a third consecutive Championship promotion after two title wins at Carrow Road.

“And yes, if you win in such a manner against one of the best sides in this league, then it’s also good for the confidence and a big boost for the mood.

“But nothing major has changed. It’s not like right now we are sitting top of the table or we are already promoted.

“Ipswich are still in a really good position and it’s important also that we protect our position because we can expect the teams around us to pick up many points and we have to keep going.

“When you deliver such a performance in such a spotlight game it also sends a bit of a message out, but it’s not more than three points.

“It’s not possible in a game of football to put in a perfect performance, but I will say it’s probably our most mature performance of the season. Expected goals for them - zero - I never had this in my whole career. We dominated the ball, today I am a happy manager. 

“We played one of the top sides of this level and we were all over them. We fully deserved a 4-0 win. It is good for the mood, good for the confidence. Of course when you are there with a top performance against a good side there is extra motivation.

"We can allow ourselves to be there with a few hours of joy and from tomorrow we look ahead to Preston. But this is a good day.”

Ipswich boss Kieran McKenna, who guided the club to promotion in May, suffered his first defeat by more than two goals in two seasons as their manager.

“Of course it was a disappointing game that didn’t got the way we wanted it to go,” he said.

“It certainly wasn’t an enjoyable experience, but over the course of a long season you’re going to have days that don’t go your way and today was one of them.

“We’ll learn from it and move on really, really quickly.”