A total bag of balls that was. Rarely been so depressed, in these long long years of woe. If the laws of karma are right, then as a collective bunch the fans of Leeds Utd must have been a right bunch of bastards in a previous life.
So our record against Cheltenham in league history is 100% defeats. Jesus. Same starting line up, well you don't change a winning team do you? The only minor change being that Kilkenny and Howson were swapped - putting Howson notionally out on the right of midfield, although he no more stayed there than Kilkenny did on Saturday. So Kenton (our centre half playing at right back) was once again exposed when defending and way out on a limb when we were moving forward. But that griping aside for the first 43 minutes we were the better team - I think they managed 2 corners in that time whereas we should have had at least 4 goals - Beckford(x2), Kandol and Michalik - all missing good opportunities (for a couple of those, read "sitters"). We were pressing, passing trying to find a way through the Cheltenham 9 man defence. They left one guy up front all match. Prutton, Kilkenny and Howson were pinging the ball around, probing, pulling the Cheltenham defence all over and clearly creating chances. Then on the 40th minute some aimless hoof landed with Richardson (our right back playing left back) who had a couple of goes at controlling it, but made a cock-up of that. I'm not really sure what happened next, it was either a weak pass from Frazer to Lubo (our centre half who used to be good), or it was simply bad control and the ball rolled towards Michalik, he was far too busy counting the rain drops on the end of his nose to notice what was happening, their forward suddenly had the ball at his feet, unchallenged on the edge of the box and so he thought, "let's have a pop, what's the worst that can happen?". So he did and from 20 yards the ball flew past Caspar (our goalkeeper who used to save stuff) who didn't move. 0-1 and you had to laugh. They had been dreadful up to that point. However it wouldn't be long until they we toying with us, we just didn't know it yet. We huffed and puffed a bit in the remaining 3 or 4 minutes for the equaliser but didn't really get anywhere. At half time the only choice seemed to be between taking Kenton off and moving Richardson across - bringing Freedman on; taking Richardson off and bringing Freedman on; or the more radical, taking both full backs off, bringing Freedman and Huntington on. Either way going to a 3 man defence was the logical thing to do because they had nine men behind the ball and only one forward. The 2 FBacks had been like spare parts all evening... Start of the 2nd half, no changes, the game proceeded as before. Loads of possession, some pressure. The goal was sure to come even with Kandol and Beckford misfiring so badly. On 60 minutes, we make a substitution at last, but, oh dear - its Howson (one of the better players on the night) off and Freedman on. This decision was booed. I thought it was an elementary, rank bad decision and the first one that has really made me worry about Macca's capability for the role. 3 minutes later they score from another blunder in our defence. A long shot-come-cross is swirling from the right wide of the far post, Caspar charged across and jumped and got a soft hand on it. He didn't move it that far away from the goal but he was out of position now. Their forward picked it up on the left edge of our box, turned it onto his right foot and whipped the ball into the far corner. Great finish from him. Dreadful defending again. >From this point on everything for us just fell to pieces, confidence shot to hell, passes going all over the place, stupid challenges, petulant attempts to "win" free-kicks and penalties. Shocking stuff. And they were the better team - keeping the ball, playing within their limits but knowing that we couldn't get it off them and even if we did we would be so fucking clueless that we'd give it straight back to them again. Shortly after this Kandol got involved in something, got a stupid booking which I think was on the back of more petulance over a decision that went against him. At this point the crowd were chanting "off, off, off" which shows how a) frustrated and b) brain dead they were. In short order Macca made a double substitution, Kandol for Elding - which got big cheers - and Frazer for Hughes. And absolutely gob-smackingly stupidly - Hughes went to LBack in place of Richardson and not into Midfield. Unbelievable. We eventually got a goal when a sweet left foot cross from Kilkenny found Elding 6 yards out and he headed home nicely. His bellowing celebration made him look like a werewolf in mid-transition. We really never really looked good enough to get the equaliser. When Freedman fed the ball through to a charging Beckford running into the box you could see from Beckford's body language that it wasn't going in - a confident striker takes those early - 1 touch bang or a touch to control and then bang - but last night he tapped and tapped and tapped until he'd run around the keeper and into touch... ANGKERGREN - dreadful for the 2nd - a decent save or two otherwise KENTON - absolutely not at the races today - constantly caught out of position - but then where were his teammates RICHARDSON - you knew playing a right footer at LBack would catch up with us eventually - they just have to bring the ball inside all the time - last night it did. MARQUES - not at his best but then with the chaos around him he did well not to drown MICHALIK - actually had a commanding opening 30 minutes - from then on going backwards HOWSON - one of our best players - got stuck in, moved the ball, looked lively - couldn't believe it when he was subbed PRUTTON - MOTM - while his longer range distribution is limited he is OK at short sharp passing, he gets stuck in and his attitude can't be faulted. There was a time towards the end when we were struggling to get the ball out of the RBack area, he was doing this all by himself, tracking back, chasing between 2 or 3 men, carrying the ball forward KILKENNY - good start and end to the game - disappeared in the middle - nice cross for the goal JOHNSON - carthorse who runs around a lot but hasn't got a clue what to do with the ball KANDOL - as above minus the running about a lot BECKFORD - we need him scoring and soon or we're buggered (and he'll be off the the 2nd division without us) Subs FREEDMAN - didn't see much from him to be honest, except the ball to Beckford HUGHES - at LBack - explain that to me someone ELDING - scored a decent headed goal, seconds after I'd said I couldn't remember seeing Elding doing anything worthwhile in any of his games. Crowd Small and bad tempered Weather rubbish Temper afterwards foul _______________________________________________ the Leeds List is an unmoderated mailing list and the list administrators accept no liability for the personal views and opinions of contributors. Leedslist mailing list [email protected] http://list.zetnet.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist DELETE THE FOOTERS WHEN REPLYING YOU LAZY SODS!!!! DELETE THE FOOTERS WHEN REPLYING YOU LAZY SODS!!!!
