Leeds held at home by battling Peterborough side.

Leeds fading promotion hopes suffered another blow with a third draw inside seven days, this time the whites were held at home by lowly Peterborough.

Neil Warnock named an unchanged starting 11 for the sixth game in succession and who could blame him? The whites had been unlucky not to pick maximum points up from tricky trips to Leicester and Crystal Palace, however those fans who had travelled to both the King Power Stadium and Selhurst Park would have been mystified at the pale shadow the team were in front of their own fans to the one on the road.

Having seen a long range effort from Michael Tonge saved by Olejinik, the visitors took a deserved lead. The pace of Dwight Gayle had caused Leeds problems and the £500,000 signing from Dagenham and Redbridge latched on to a long put from Ojenik and shot past a retreating Lee Peltier and Paddy Kenny with ease on 15 minutes.

Leeds inability to string any sort of passing movement together and resort to high, long balls soon had the crowd on their backs and it looked a long' hard road back into the game even though there were 75 minutes left.

Tom Lees left the field injured on 26 with Jason Pearce taking his place, Pearce could have cemented a rare appearance on the stroke of half time but failed to apply any direction on McCormack's superbly whipped in cross from the left and Steve Morison hooked a half chance wide as the Leeds team left the field to a chorus of boo's.

Morison did not appear for the second half, Diouf taking the place of the ex Norwich man who was apparently carrying an injury. However with Gayle going close on Kenny's goal again, Leeds looked like they were staring an embarrassing defeat in the face.

However on 56 the scores were levelled when Stephen Warnock sent in the perfect hanging corner from the right and Sam Byram applied the neatest touch for his second inside a week and fourth of the season.

Leeds tried to pile on the pressure but seemed to have difficulty in unpicking a solid Peterborough backline. I was mystified why McCormack, a renown finisher was toiling on the flanks instead of manovering inside the box in a more central role to get on the end of some of the balls Leeds were aiming from the flanks.

Varney did have the ball in the net on 76 minutes but an off-side flag denied Leeds the lead.

Although we had improved second-half, we still could have easily lost the game when some desperate defending gave Peterborough a trio of free kicks on the edge of the box, one drag-back by Stephen Warnock arguably punishable with a red rather than the yellow he was given by referee Hooper.

Kenny then pulled off a match winning save to deny Gayle a dramatic winner which would have surely nailed our fading play-off hopes once and for all?

Four minutes of added time only prolonged the agony for the home fans who saw Pearce feebly head Green's cross wide deep into stoppage time.

A higher than average crowd of 24,240 lured by a cheap ticket promotion was arguably the champagne moment of a disappointing evening. There is no faulting the workmanlike effort of Warnock's troops, but I suspect they fell for the "it's only Peterborough" trap and there was a chronic lack of quality on show.

Photo: Action Images

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