A bit late with this one - yesterday was a long day and all the beer, morphine and lack of buses did not do me a lot of good ! Anyway on to the game. One of those really mixed games, some good stuff, some very poor and at the end of it all two points dropped. It is hard when the opposition do not want to play - they stuck lots of men behind the ball and were niggly, dirty but very hard working throughout. This showed up our lack of guile and ingenuity. As others have said we need a quality midfield player - O'Kane and Phillips are too similar and both too lacking in certain areas. I thought the ref did us no favours - not sure how their number 2 (someone told me it was ex Leeds player Eric Lihaj) stayed on the pitch and the ref seemed to let a lot of stuff go but then managed to book Pontus for a tackle that looked fine from my spot, and then booked Saiz for arguing when he was definitely fouled in my view. None of that takes away the fact that we were disappointing for much of the game and whilst we always hoped and even thought we might score we were never really believing that we would. Again set pieces looked to be our best outlet but none of them quite worked out. First half the only real chance we had was a corner that Pontus headed with power but straight at the keeper who spilled it to Roofe who could only hook it over the bar Second half we did step it up at times and Roofe and Hernandez both should have scored when brilliant football by the mercurial Saiz (we cannot afford to lose him!) put them through on goal - Roofe hit the bar and Hernandez shot at the keeper. Lasogga also came close with a header from a cross by Sacko but it was just too high for him to get any power We were also guilty of some awfully wayward shooting - Phillips started this on the 47th minute when he blasted one high wide and not very handsome from a hundred yards out - ridiculous. His next attempt was closer both in where he shot from and where it ended up. Saiz, Roofe and Lassogga also had attempts from long range that threatened the crowd more than the goal At the other end Felix made three saves - a decent one in the first half, a good one that he tipped over the bar, and an everyday one that he parried out to our defender (thankfully) as Forest made no real attempt to win the game.
So a poor start to the New year especailly when coupled with the defeat at Brum - of the last six matches these were the two real bankers and yet we only got one point from the six , thankfully we got 12 points from the other four. Two games without a goal is also not great to say the least. The 'wave your scarves' project looked decent again but not sure if it is going to be 'our thing' or if indeed we want it to be. I thought the crowd were very loud early doors but the atmosphere died as our football failed to impress. The fans have done their bit - another 30k plus crowd turning out to watch a game that was live on Sky so now it is over to Orta and Radz etc to make the most of the transfer window. I have heard lots of managers say that the January is hard and Orta in his long interview made the same points and indicated that we would not be planning to do much business in the window. Having said that we are still (just) in the play off position and only 6 pts off second (Wolves are untouchable) so if we can bring in the right couple of players we could make sure of a play off place minimum and that could be enough to get us up - the play offs being a bit of a lottery and anyone can win them (OK apart from us given our last four play off results - losing 3 finals and one semi!) Anyway Happy New Year to all on the list and Leeds United fans wherever you are ALAW as they say ! Dave _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: https://mailman.gn.apc.org/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email leedslist-unsubscr...@gn.apc.org Find us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/leedslist/ FLAME WARS 'R US
