On a wet night at the seaside Leeds needed a penalty shootout to finally see off the challenge of Fleetwood Town in the first round of the EFL Cup.

Garry Monk fielded a strong line-up for this tie, even though he made five changes from the starting line-up that began the season at QPR. One of these was enforced, with Beradi still injured, and another saw Hernandez making his debut after being ineligible on Sunday when his international clearance hadn’t come through.

The other changes saw Cooper, Sacko and Phillips all getting a start. The opposing dugout also had a couple of familiar faces, in the shape our short-lived manager Uwe Rosler, and substitute goalkeeper Alex Cairns, still unable to get first team football despite dropping into League One.

The Leeds fans provided most of the atmosphere throughout the game, and officially there were 1,325 of us in the crowd of 3,326. But that number probably doesn’t include the group of ‘Fleetwood Whites’ who were escorted round into the Leeds end, proudly waving the flag they’d brought along to annoy the other locals.

But on the field we were a lot less impressive, and we could have conceded in the first minute, as Cole sent a shot across the face of goal and just wide of the far post. And we did go behind in the 13th. minute, due to our familiar inability to deal with corners, as we failed to clear the danger and allowed Holloway to nip in and score from close range.

This prompted a bit of a disagreement in the Leeds end, with a chant of “time to go Massimo” from some fans being met with “support the team or **** off home” from a few others. And we could have gifted Fleetwood a comedy second goal, with Bartley whacking a clearance against Taylor, with the rebound only just going wide.

But Leeds recovered from the early setback and started to dominate the possession, with Hernandez at the heart of our best moves, though unfortunately he was off-balance when a fine cross from Sacko picked him out and he sent the ball well over the bar. Our best effort of the half came just before the break when Neal did well to keep out a fierce shot from Roofe.

At the start of the second half Cooper was replaced by Bamba, so did Garry Monk again start with a player who wasn’t fully fit? We continued to dominate the possession, but without creating much up front. Uwe Rosler finally had reasons to be thankful he signed Chris Wood for Leeds, with our centre forward once again showing little threat up front and a complete inability to win the ball in the air.

Several long range shots went over the roof of the stand at the Leeds end, and I started to wonder if our tactic was to hope that Fleetwood might run out of balls, so the game would have to be abandoned. The second sub saw Mowatt replacing Sacko, who hadn’t impressed me as much as he did on Sunday, with a few of our moves breaking down due to his mis-placed passes.

But it was the final change in the 75th minute that had the decisive impact, with Antonsson replacing Viera. Again he looked lively and we looked much more threatening with two up front, and in the 89th minute the Swede saved us from another embarrassing defeat. A good ball into the box found Antonsson, and he turned to hammer the ball past Neal.

During the five minutes injury time we seemed keen to win the tie before extra time, but the Fleetwood keeper kept out an excellent volley from Mowatt. So an extra 30 minutes it was, but only four minutes into the extension Antonsson was fouled as he went round a defender. Fleetwood protested that the Swede had been offside, but to no effect, as Wood stepped up to hammer the penalty past Neal.

As the game continued we seemed to be going through quite comfortably, but with nine minutes remaining a Fleetwood breakaway found Hunter completely unmarked, and he had plenty of time to hammer a shot past Green from outside the box. And so it was that we faced the lottery of the penalty shootout, to be held in front of the home fans in the Memorial stand.

The first nine kicks were scored comfortably enough, but the tenth saw Rob Green diving to his left to save from Jonsson, and we’d won the shootout 5-4. All’s well that ends well, though after such a narrow victory over lower division opposition Garry Monk will know that he still has a lot of work to do with this side.

Our reward for this victory is a trip to League 2 Luton Town in the next round. I can’t wait.

Photo: Action Images

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