3.30 On Saturday and I’m a fairly happy bunny.
Not only have we managed to park our minibus in the VIP car park for free but Leeds have weathered an early storm from West Brom , including one magnificent save by Warner from a Hartson header. West Brom have just had a man sent off for a last man tackle on Horsefield and Healy is about to take the resulting penalty.
So what on earth went wrong ?
The substitutions at half-time were crucial.
We had to replace the injured Kelly , but I must expect I was thought it would be Foxe coming on with Killer moving across. There was some logic in bringing Stone on – probably our best passer - on the basis that we could spread the ball round and make the ten men chase more. Except it involved Douglas going to right back where he had a bit of a shocker.
On the other hand West Brom got their change spot on. Avoiding the temptation to swap a striker for a defender and hence going on the defensive, they took off the slow lumbering Hartson for the speedy Kamara meaning they now had the pace to trouble us on the break and meaning we could never push forward that much.
Still it shouldn’t have really mattered – even though we were one down by half-time, Healy having missed the penalty by a mile and Albrechtson having nodded in from a free header from a corner, we still had an extra man and 45 minutes to play against a tiring defence.
The first problem was some of the players appeared never to have met each other before. The Crainey / Butler / Kilgallon triangle at the back were forever leaving the ball for each other forcing Killer into last ditch tackles. Second half passes repeatedly went astray, no-one seemed to have a clue which way Westlake or Healy were going to run and at one point the ball actually got passed to Lewis who for some bizarre reason was standing off the pitch.
West Brom meanwhile had spotted a huge gap in the right side of our defence and whenever we gave the ball back looked to exploit Camara’s pace down that side. Towards the end of the game Douglas was largely in the centre of the pitch, whether he’s got lost or we’d actually switched to 3 at the back by that point I have no idea. We could actually have lost by more as at 2-0 Phillips was clean through on goal and went down, just as we were expecting the red card and penalty the ref decided he’d dived and booked him. In fact we can’t complain about the ref at all, as he also failed to sent off Derry who’d been booked for diving when he tripped a Baggie in the 2nd half.
We had a little flurry at the end, and scored a good goal with a shot on the turn from Horsefield plus a tap in from Stone and we actually had a penalty shout for handball in injury time that could have made it three each. That would have been a travesty and their goal on the break in the last seconds brought the scoreline back to reality – by which time the majority of Leeds fans had left anyway.
To gap it all, the only way out of the ground for the away fans was down a big hill in the opposite direction to our minibus and by the time we’d worked our way back to the car park everyone else was on the move – leaving us with an hour long traffic jam to contend with.
Scores
Warner 6 – One fabulous save first half, horribly exposed in the second.
Kelly 6 – Carried off just before h-t – didn’t look good
Crainey 5 – Usual mix of backing off defending, great cross-field passes and poor crossing
Butler 4 – Game was too frenetic and just passed him by.
Kilgallon 7 – A lot of good covering tackles but not entirely blameless in the situation arising. Needs to learn to not back-off all the time when people run at him.
Douglas 4 – Proved why Kelly is such a good right-back – went missing for large spells of the game.
Nicholls 6 – I think we’ll miss him – looks slow and cumbersome yet despite this seems to often be in the right place.
Derry 6 – Tried hard but lucky to stay on the pitch.
Lewis 3 – Had a shocker, crosses and corners consistently hit first defender, on the one occasion he beat his man – he then crossed into the crowd.
Healy 5 – Dreadful penalty and never seemed in the game. Has failed to realise that defenders in lower leagues will try and head the ball and just running behind them (as per 2 of his 3 goals against Spain ) doesn’t work.
Horsefield 7 – Popular with the Baggies fans but worked hard and deserved his goal.
Subs
Stone 6 – Didn’t really influence the game the way you’d hope.
Westlake 6 – Did try and get forward and link it up – with little success.
Moore 6 – It’s worrying that he’s moving from a bit of a joke to a cult hero just because he actually runs around a bit.
Matt
