Amongst all the protests, Leeds deserved a point from yesterday’s game with Middlesborough, but we didn’t get one because of a bizzare performance from referee A.Taylor, who thought that 25,000 people had come to see him.

The day began with the anti-Bates protest that gathered by the Bremner statue, pointing at the East Stand building site and chanting “that’s where our money’s gone”. It then moved round to the back of the West Stand, and I thought that the best chant was “Ken Bates won’t pay for you!” to the police who were keeping a close eye on the demonstration to make sure that nobody started rioting.

Once we’d got inside the stadium we discovered that Grayson had made a couple of changes to the defence from the team that played the last league game at Southampton. O’Brien was left out after looking completely knackered during the first two games, and didn’t even make the bench. Tom Lees came in, but had to play at right back while Bromby played in the middle. This meant that we had central defenders playing in all four defensive position, by on the whole this didn’t work out too badly.

Leeds made a lively start, with Ikeme having to save a fierce shot from Gradel, but there was a sign of things to come when the ref booked Gradel and Mc.Mahon for a minor scuffle when he could have just had a word with both players to calm them down. This first yellow was to have consquences for both players before too long.

Sure enough, Leeds went down to ten men in the 26^th minute, when Gradel received a second yellow for a challenge on Mc.Mahon that looked completely innocuous. When Mr.Taylor called Gradel over I thought he would just give him a warning, but to my surprise he pulled out a second yellow card and then the red. From the free kick Middlesboro almost capitalised on their man advantage as Emnes stole into the area unmarked, but Lonegran made an excellent save to tip his header over the bar.

Soon afterwards the sending off led to Howson’s first yellow card when a breakaway left us short of numbers at the back and he had no choice but to bring Emnes down. But Leeds managed to regroup and put Boro under a bit of pressure, and we nearly saw one of best goals ever scored at Elland Road as Clayton tried his luck from just inside the Boro half. It looked as if it was going in, but Ikeme wasn’t quite far enough off his line, and managed to get back in time to tip it over the bar. And as we went into first half injury time it was the visitors’ turn to be the victims of an outrageous decision.

The second yellow card for Mc.Mahon was every bit as harsh as the one Gradel received earler, as all that happened was that Howson ran into to the back of him as both players ran down the touchline. But Howson was desperate to even up the numbers and he appealed loudly for a second yellow, and the ref duly obliged, so we went in at the break playing ten versus ten. Despite this attempt to appease the crowd Mr.Taylor still got a good booing as he went down the tunnel.

We now thought that Leeds would have every chance of going on to win the game, especially when a firm header from Lees was cleared off the line after a corner. Grayson obviously thought so too, as his first chance was to replace Brown with a more attacking midfield player in Nunez, though he probably regretted this a few minutes later when Leeds went down to nine men after yet another bizzare refereeing decision.

Howson collided with Emnes, and as far as I could see it was a completely accidental tangle of legs. It seemed the referee was going to book Emnes for diving (which wouldn’t have been fair either) but changed his mind on the advice of the fourth official, who was fifty yards away from the incident on the far side of the field!

With Boro’s numerical advantage restored the Leeds players began to tire, and they began to put us under pressure, but Lonegran was having a fine game and whenever they got past him the two central defenders were there to put their bodies on the line. One neat passing move ended with McDonald skipping past O’Dea and shooting past Lonegran, only for Kisnorbo to clear it off the line.

But the pressure finally told in the 67^th. minute when Emnes took it inside past Leeds and fired it into the far corner. As Leeds tried to get back into the game I thought that Grayson’s final two substitutions were quite bizzare. First he replaced Snodgrass with young Zac Thompson, when I would have thought that in the circumstances we needed the more experienced man on the field. Then he took Mc.Cormack off and Sam came on, which meant that we had no strikers on the field when we needed a goal!

And we nearly saw a grave injustice off the crowd, when a fan ran to edge of the field to retrieve the ball, just to hurry things up when no ballboys were around. Amazingly he was threatened with being thrown out, but he got the full support of the kop and the north-east corner who were already wound up by the way the match was going. It was good to see the arrogant stewards getting plenty of well-deserved abuse.

Back on the field Boro came to close to wrapping the game up on a couple of occasions, and Lonegran had to make further fine saves to deny Mc.Donald and then Arca. But Adam Clayton hadn’t given the game up, and as we came up to ninety minutes his persistent run created a chance for Nunez which was scrambled away for a corner. Five minutes of injury time were announced which gave us a glimmer of hope, but we couldn’t force an equaliser, even though Lonegran came up for a couple of set pieces in the dying moments of the game.

So we went down to our second league defeat, which leaves us near the foot of the table with the other three teams on the dreaded nul points. But at least there are some positives we can draw from this game, not least from the good team spirit and the performance of Clayton in particular. Here’s hoping for better luck against Hull on Tuesday night.

Photo: Action Images

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