Leeds United took another step towards a return to the Premier League with a 5-0 thrashing of Stoke City on Thursday evening.
Goals from Mateusz Klich, Helder Costa, Liam Cooper, Pablo Hernandez and Patrick Bamford was enough for Marcelo Bielsa's side to reclaim top spot in the Championship from West Brom.
Whilst it took until the stroke of half-time for the Whites to break down the Potters, the emphatic win certainly sent a strong message to the likes of the Baggies, Brentford and the rest of the automatic promotion hopefuls.
And the performance caught the eye of a certain Mr. Javier Mascherano.
The Argentine who was handed his international debut by Whites head coach Marcelo Bielsa in 2003, found himself live tweeting during the game at Elland Road and was impressed with what he saw.
A rough translation of the first tweet reads: "Leeds' first goal gave reassurance to a team that, until then, played with the weight of the results of the day.
"The second half is being the recognizable team that led him to be the leader of the championship."
The former Liverpool star then praised Hernandez's goal.
"Great goal by Pablo Hernandez," he added. "Very important victory to send a message to your pursuers!!!."
Potters boss Michael O'Neill also heaped praise on Leeds after watching his side suffer a heavy defeat.
"I'd be very surprised if Leeds don't go up to be honest. They're the best team that we've played," he told reporters. "I thought physically they were a lot. We couldn't deal with them physically. We didn't win many one-v-one duels all over the pitch.
"The pace at which they played, particularly when they got ahead was difficult for us.
"I thought at time in the first half we gave a decent account of ourselves and tried to stay in the game. But against a team of that quality you can't given them a leg up and we did that with the penalty, the needless penalty.
"They're going away from goal.
"Once we went behind in the game it was always going to be very difficult for us."
