EUNAN O’Kane admitted midweek opponents Leeds had been “poor” but insisted Cherries deserved the plaudits for putting to the sword their lacklustre visitors.

The bullish midfielder praised Cherries’ professionalism during a 4-1 victory that saw the Dean Court outfit out of sight before half an hour had been played.

And while the 23-year-old Irishman was critical of a United side who made no impression during the opening 45 minutes, O’Kane felt the manner of Cherries’ display had widened the chasm between the teams.

O’Kane, a second-half substitute, told the Daily Echo: “Credit to the lads, I think it was a bit of a whirlwind for Leeds in the first half.

"They didn’t know what to do with us or how to cope with the threat and our three goals were fully justified.

“From that point, the game was beyond them and we did a very professional job in seeing out the game.

“Their biggest threat was aerially from (Matt) Smith so it annoyed us to concede in the manner that we did, but it was a great result and takes us out of immediate reach of them.

“We weren’t surprised by it. We had talked quite a lot about them and knew exactly what to expect and that Smith would be the main target every opportunity that they got.

“The plan was to stop the supply to him and give the back four respite as often as we could. Things went very well for us and it probably looked like they were still on the coach for 25 minutes.

“I didn’t think Leeds offered anything offensively against us and it was definitely up there as one of our top all-round performances of the season. It was a pleasure to watch the first 30 minutes.

“They were not good by any stretch of the imagination. It was definitely not the best Leeds team I had witnessed but with the way our boys were playing, I wouldn’t have wanted to have been in their team during the first half an hour.

“We carried out the game plan the gaffer had set out and as poor as Leeds were, we couldn’t do anything about that. We had to beat what was in front of us and we dealt with them with relative ease.”