The Premier League title race was effectively declared over as the Leeds bandwagon finally ground to a shuddering and decisive halt.

For the first time this season, manager David O'Leary's side have lost three successive matches, and in doing so it means Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United are out of sight.

The league trophy might as well be gift-wrapped and handed to Ferguson now because with just seven matches remaining, the Old Trafford giants are 10 points clear - a bridge too far for those that trail in their wake.

While United dismantled West Ham, Leeds stumbled to a sorry defeat as 20-year-old Jon Harley proved the Elland Road club do not have the monopoly on gifted youngsters.

The battle now is for the minor places, and after being in the top two since September 19, Leeds are in extreme danger of watching their long-held dream of a place in next season's Champions League also disappear over the horizon.

Harley's second goal of the campaign means Chelsea are within five points of Leeds and that coveted second automatic slot in the top flight which guarantees European riches.

Leeds are faltering at a vital time, while Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea are finding their feet just when the going starts to get tough.

With a trip to the 'Hell' of Galatasaray in the UEFA Cup semi-final beckoning on Thursday, O'Leary's side could not be heading to Turkey in worse form.

In truth, Harley's 62nd-minute winner was the highlight of a game in which you had to wonder what all the fuss was about given the pre-match hype.

It was a match which could have been awarded an X-certificate on past record, but this was about as tame as watching Bambi.

After the full-blooded encounters between the sides in the 1970s when parental guidance was essential, the mantle was then taken up by the late 1990s teams as tribal warfare unfolded.

The previous five games had seen four dismissals - including Frank Leboeuf twice - along with another 30 yellow cards having been dispensed, with the two clubs seemingly battle-hardened.

Referee Jeff Winter, who had been in charge of the last two games, could rightly have expected to have taken centre stage, but was reduced to nothing more than a cameo role as the players behaved impeccably - for the most part.

Only in the closing stages did tempers begin to fray as Alan Smith was booked - one of four all told - for an elbow on Leboeuf, which led to Chris Sutton then taking a stranglehold on Stephen McPhail as the players converged.

But it was nothing more than a storm in a teacup as Chelsea boss Gianluca Vialli had earlier appealed to his side to keep their cool should the temperature have taken a sharp rise at any point, while Leeds still had the words of a Football Association disciplinary panel ringing in their ears.

United were fined a record £150,000 for their part in an 18-man brawl with Spurs at Elland Road in February, as well as censured as to their future conduct.

So it was perhaps no surprise a potentially explosive clash failed to reach anywhere near boiling point, with the treatment meted out to Leboeuf creating the only tension.

Leboeuf was booed every time he touched the ball, with Leeds fans not having forgotten the red card in last season's goalless draw in Yorkshire, but more controversially his stamp on Harry Kewell in Leeds' 2-0 win at Stamford Bridge in December.

On that occasion, the Frenchman was just about to receive his second booking from Winter - and the subsequent red - when he dug his studs into the Australian international's ankle, an action which went unseen by the official but not by the cameras.

But the experienced campaigner and World Cup winner shrugged off the boos and the jeers from the majority of the 40,000 crowd, who witnessed a game dominated by the defences.

With such important games looming for both sides, neither was willing to give an inch in a match which will have sent watching scouts from Barcelona and Galatasaray away thinking they have little to fear later this week.

Leboeuf, restored to the starting line-up after missing last week's home draw with Southampton, is already sidelined for the Champions League quarter-final first-leg with Barca at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday due to suspension.

But if anyone from the Spanish giants was looking on, then they will surely realise the Chelsea team on show today will bear no resemblance to that which will play in midweek.

Vialli, with one eye on that game and another on the FA Cup semi-final with Newcastle next Sunday, and having had 10 players away on international duty last week, rested a dozen of his top stars.

Gianfranco Zola was benched, but there was no place for the likes of Tore Andre Flo, Marcel Desailly, Didier Deschamps, Dan Petrescu and Gustavo Poyet, who returned from an exhausting trip to South America only in the early hours of this morning having played in a World Cup qualifier for Uruguay.

It meant there were four Englishmen in the starting line-up for the second successive Premier League match, but other than skipper Dennis Wise, it's almost certain Sutton, Jody Morris and Harley will play no part against the Catalan side.

Barcelona will surely trouble keeper Ed De Goey more than Leeds, though, even if United did shave the game in terms of chances and possession despite the defeat

After George Weah had fired into the side-netting in the ninth minute, Leeds then found their stride, but other than an Ian Harte header at De Goey, and a glancing header from Erik Bakke which shaved the post, their best effort of the game came just after the half hour.

Kewell's low ball to the near post was stabbed goalwards by Smith, with a scrambling De Goey just managing to keep the chance from crossing the line.

So it was left to Harley to settle matters as he ran on to a Sutton through ball, and after Gary Kelly had slipped as he tried to clear, the youngster was able to beat Nigel Martyn with a composed left-foot drive.

Lee Bowyer, fit again after a recent knee ligament injury, did direct one far-post header wide while in space in the second half, but it was as much as United could muster.

The previously sensational Kewell, who had scored six goals in his previous six games, was left one shy of a club record previously set by three players - including Peter Lorimer.

But he found himself shackled, like the rest of his team-mates, who will now have to free themselves from the constraints of the defeats which are threatening to drag such a sensational season towards a barren end.

Teams:

Leeds: Martyn, Kelly, Woodgate, Radebe, Harte, Bowyer, Bakke, McPhail, Wilcox (Huckerby 74), Smith, Kewell.

Subs Not Used: Haaland, Mills, Jones, Robinson.

Booked: Bowyer, Smith.

Chelsea: De Goey, Ferrer, Babayaro, Leboeuf, Thome, Harley (Lambourde 88), Morris, Di Matteo, Wise, Weah, Sutton.

Subs Not Used: Hogh, Della Bona, Zola, Cudicini.

Booked: Morris, Sutton.

Goals: Harley 62.

Att: 40,162

Ref: J Winter (Stockton-on-Tees).