Leeds gave a good account of themselves against promotion favourites Queens Park Rangers, but Clint Hill’s 75th minute goal decided the game.

Leeds made just one change from the previous league game at Ipswich, with Tom Lees paying the penalty for a couple of dodgy displays this season and new signing Scott Wootton taking his place in central defence. QPR took the field with a side packed with famous names, including Andy Johnson, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Joey Barton (a fine player, despite his obvious personality disorder).

The visitors have shipped out a fair number of players during the summer but they’ve still got a substantial wage bill, and chairman Tony Fernandes is clearly gambling on a swift return to the Premiership. But the word is that they’ve got a much better team spirit now, so maybe Harry has managed to offload the players who were messing around and keep the ones who want to play for the club.

During the first half Leeds matched their illustrious opponents, though once again we had a televised match that was rather short on goalmouth action. We must be giving regular Sky viewers a misleading impression that we’re a bit on the dull side, because our non-televised games so far have been a bit more entertaining.

Joey Barton got the ball in the net early on but the goal was disallowed for offside, wrongly as it turned out, because the TV replay actually showed that he was level when the ball was played. But the ref partly made amends for QPR later in the half, when Barton barged into Austin’s back after the ball had gone, but mysteriously the official declined to give a foul. We should have had a free kick in a dangerous position just outside the box.

We looked pretty solid at the back during the first half but that momentarily changed just after the break when an abysmal backpass from Warnock was well wide of it’s intended target (Pearce) and became an excellent through ball to Charlie Austin. Luckily Kenny managed to spare Warnock’s blushes by saving the QPR man’s fierce shot from a narrow angle.

Leeds were still finding it hard going at the other end of the field, where Hunt and Varney had worked hard to little effect, so on the hour mark McDermott replaced both players, with Poleon and Smith taking the field. The idea was obviously for Smith to win the ball in the air and knock it down for Poleon to use his pace, and this combination produced a chance straight away but Poleon’s shot lacked the power to trouble Green.

The sides were still looking evenly matched going into the final 15 minutes, but then Rangers got the breakthrough from what should have been a routine free kick. Kenny failed to hold onto the ball and it fell kindly for Clint Hill to smash it into the net. We’ve been linked with the veteran defender a couple of times in the last few years and today we were left to regret that we never got round to signing him, as he chose this game to score his first goal for over a year.

McDermott made his final substitution to try to get back in the game, with Diouf coming on for Green, and the old man showed a few neat touches as always. The next chance came when Smith and Poleon combined once again, but once again Poleon could only shoot straight at Green. The Rangers keeper might have once let a soft shot slip through his hands against the USA in the world cup, but that didn’t happen this time.

We saved the best to last, as five minutes into injury time Rudy Austin hit an absolute pile-driver of a shot from over 30 yards out. Had it gone in that would have been one of our most memorable goals of all time, but unfortunately it just clipped then top of the bar with Green well beaten. There was just time for QPR to take the goal kick before the ref blew the final whistle.

Despite the disappointing result I think we can still take some comfort from the performance against the strongest side in the division. After our promising start I was thinking before the match that today’s game would tell us just how good we are, or whether we’d got a bit lucky in a couple of the games. And I reckon on this evidence we haven’t got enough quality up front to challenge for automatic promotion, but overall we should be good enough for a place in the top six.

Photo: Action Images

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