After Thompson’s early dismissal a heavy defeat seemed more than likely, but a battling performance came close to getting us a point against high flying Reading. But that was before Le Fondre popped up with two late goals to win the game for the Royals.

Injuries and suspensions forced Neil Warnock into a new formation for this game, with three central defenders and two wing-backs, with Pugh and Thompson coming into the side to operate down the flanks.

Warnock said before the game that he’d spent hours agonising over where he should play Zac Thompson, but really he needn’t have bothered, as Thompson was sent off after 13 minutes for lunging tackle. It wasn’t two footed and the decision to show a straight red was a little harsh, but perhaps the referee’s mind was made up by the reaction of the Reading players, who were very quick to surround the official en masse to demand Thompson’s dismissal.

That said, we were lucky a few minutes later when Danny Pugh dived in with a tackle that really was tow footed, and the referee didn’t even give a foul. Perhaps he thought that Pugh had played the ball, but in fact the slow motion replay showed that the Reading player actually knocked the ball against Pugh, and that Pugh’s challenge had actually caught the player first. On another day, this challenge could easily have resulted in a red card.

While all this was going on, Reading were having much the better of the game, with Gorkks sending an early header narrowly over the bar, and our old boy Ian Harte hitting the post with a curling shot. We were also fortunate that Hunt was deemed to have fouled Lonegran as the two players went up for the ball on the edge of the area, as it fell to Roberts in a good position to shoot past our stranded keeper. The best we had to offer was a shot by Mc.Cormack that went across the face of goal and some way past the far post.

In the early part of the second half Reading were still dominating possession and Pugh finally went into the book for another forceful challenge. But they were finding it hard to create any decent chances against a resolute Leeds defence, and as the minutes started to pass by we started to sense that Leeds could get an unlikely point from this game.

And things could have been even better for Leeds as the game moved into the last 20 minutes and we began to enjoy a good spell, with the best chance of the game falling to Snodgrass. McCormack’s pass put him clean through, but he opted to shoot first time instead of taking an extra touch to control it, with the result that it came of his shin and he never got any power behind it, producing an easy save for Federici.

With Leeds having played with ten men for so long it was inevitable that we would start to tire in the closing stages, and they finally got the breakthrough in the lat ten minutes. We had a let-off when Le Fondre got the ball in the net and was rightly ruled offside, but that was only a temporary reprieve, and the Reading man did manage to score a legitimate goal a couple of minutes later when he popped up unmarked at the far post to chest the ball home.

Warnock responded by sending on three fresh attacking players, with Rogers, Webber and Forssell all coming on as subs, but none of them made any impact and Reading sealed their win as the game moved into injury time. Roberts withstood a hefty challenge from Robinson to turn inside the area, and Le Fondre nipped in to help it across the line and claim his second goal.

In the end it was scant reward for a battling performance after playing for so long with ten men, but at least we can be proud of the spirit we showed in this game. It’s not the defeats in games like this which have cost us a chance to challenge for promotion, it’s all the stupid points we’ve dropped all season against the likes of Coventry and Barnsley. If we can show this sort of spirit in our home games as well as on out travels then we must be in with a chance next season.

Photo: Action Images

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