Half way through the second half my mate turned to me and said "why is everything we do so, i don't know, laboured?" That one word 'laboured' pretty much sums up the way we play, not just yesterday but for pretty much the whole season. Nothing seems to flow it is all so pedestrian and football by numbers and such hard work for them.Having said that last night was a lot better than recent games against probably the worst team I have seen this season. We scored a goal, had a few other shots and if Dallas had put away a sitter we may even have won. Wootton was taken out of the firing line after his og on Saturday and replaced by Coyle who did not look out of place in the first team. Bridcutt was replaced by Adeyemi although I did not know this until Adeymi was subbed and someone shouted 'good riddance Adeymi you're rubbish' - I thought he was Bridcutt. Not sure whether that proves how little he got involved in the match or how little i know ?Other than him we mainly did Ok with most of the players deserving a 7 out of ten.We started quite well and had them on the back foot - our usual keeping possession without doing much with it although we did look a bit more threatening albeit with a total lack of width and wingers. Taylor and Coyle both got forward and Doukara, in spellls, gave them a hard time, then came what feels like almost inevitable, we fail to capitalise on our possession and they break forward. I have not seen the goals since but it was a bit of a strange one in that the lad hit if from just inside the area with no real pace or precision but Silvestri just stood rooted to the spot and made no attempt to save it. DId it take a deflection and wrong foot him or did he think it was going wide, who knows ?Silvestri did redeem himself a bit , later on, when he pulled off a good save as we lost a bit of shape and confidence. Then came the minute that made the ticket price worth it on its own (even Cat A - lol) the ball came to our midfield player 30 yards out and he lashed it swerving and swirling into the top corner and absolute peach - but as we all prepared to congratulate Mowatt we thought, hang on a minute, that was Cook, yes our goal shy, shot shy midfielder had not only shot from way way out but he had scored - pandemonium ensued with my son, for the rest of the game saying variations of 'how the f did that go in'. We regained control of the game again then and as we went in to applause at half time we thought this may be the home game when we scored more than two.Second half was more of the same although our actual threat level went down a bit but we could have both won and lost the game when each side missed a glorious chance. Their player was clean through but made a total mess of it and ended up with a tame back heel, for us a great move with Doukara feeding Cook whose cross fell perfectly to Dallas (on as a sub for the ineffective Antenucci) all he had to do was hit it on target, he even had acres of time and space if required but he shot wide an awful miss. After that not much happened, Erwin came on and looked better than he has done in the past, maybe he needs a run of games to see what he can do, and the much maligned (by Evans anyway) Botaka got five minutes at the end - not sure what he can do in that time to change the managers view of him?So 1 1 and another point towards safety (not that we are in real danger) Fulham looked dreadful apart from McCormack who was largely quiet (one free kick on the edge of the box had us worried till it flashed over) when he did have the ball he looked a class above. He got some stick from the crowd with boos and greedy chants. Cellino got an easy ride from the 17,000 who braved the cold to watch it.We need a number of new players next season, but we all know that, and need to stop everything being so 'laboured' Dave _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email leedslist-unsubscr...@gn.apc.org
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