auth attemp failing in Laravel 5.4

I have some post about auth attempt failure but my case seems to be different. Still in dev phase so my password is in plain text. I try to login but i keep getting false and so redirected back to login page. dd reveals that both email and password are correct. What could be responsible for this failure? PS: it's my first time working with laravel

web.php

Route::post('/login', 'AuthController@authenticate');
Route::get('/', 'PostController@index');

AuthController

public function authenticate()
{
    //dd($request);

    // attempt to login the user
    if (! auth()->attempt(request(['email', 'password']))) {

        return back();
    }

    return redirect('/');
}

PostController

public function index()
{
    $posts = Post::latest()->limit(3)->get();

    return view('post.index', compact('posts'));
}

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