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Battling Leeds go down to Leicester
Saturday, 18th Jan 2014 18:53 by Tim Whelan

Leeds produced a much improved performance against Leicester City but still went down to defeat thanks to Nugent’s goal in the 87th minute.

As expected, Brian McDermott made several changes after the abysmal defeats at Sheffield Wednesday and Rochdale, with Peltier and Murphy dropped to the bench and Pugh and Zaliukas left out of the squad altogether. Luke Varney came in up front, Michael Brown added some bite to midfield , Byram returned as an overlapping-right back and Warnock came in on the left.

So we moved to a 4-4-2 formation and it was pretty much the side I would have chosen, except I would have gone for more creativity in central midfield than Austin and Brown would provide. Before the game there was a minutes applause for the life of Bobby Collins, and we were left to wonder if the current side could muster the kind of commitment shown by the little scot throughout his playing career.

The answer was that that they could, especially during a frantic opening, which saw both sides hitting the post inside the first ten minutes. Our first chance came when a Leicester defender tried to clear the ball for a throw but underhit it, allowing Varney to cross the ball and McCormack to attempt a glancing header into the corner that came back off the woodowork.

At the other end Pearce allowed a long ball to pass him, without realising that Vardy was running through behind him, allowing the Leicester man to fire in a shot that also struck the post. But Leeds kept going after that scare and went close when Schmeichel came off his line but didn’t get much distance on his punch, allowing McCormack to try a chip that was headed off the line. It was only cleared straight back to McCormack, and his deflected shot was turned wide by Schmeichel, but might have been going wide in any case.

By now Schmeichel was getting all the usual abuse from the Kop, but he made a great save to keep the scores level after another defensive error put McCormack through on goal. McCormack waited for the Dane to commit himself, but Schmeichel ‘stood big’ and got his hand to the ball when our skipper tried to chip it over the top of him. The rebound came to Varney, who tried a looping header, but it didn’t have the power to beat the two defenders who had raced back to clear it off the line.

We also had chances from close range headers by Kebe and Lees, but we couldn’t keep up the frantic pace and during the last 15 minutes of the first half Leicester were able to get back into the game and deny us space as we tried to get forward. As the cliché goes, you always need to score when you’re having a good spell.

And the second half began much as the first had finished, with the contest becoming far more even. But we did have Stewart getting into the game for the first time, and he worked his way into a couple of shooting positions only for the Leicester defence to recover quickly enough to block the shot both times. I started to think that we would to make a couple of changes to freshen things up, but although our tempo was dropping, McDermott opted not to use any subs until the 85th minute.

I thought Michael Brown would have to go off after being on the receiving end of three of the sort of naughty challenges he normally dishes out, but he struggled on to the end despite a couple of knocks that would have felled many a lesser man. When the change finally came it involved Peltier and Hadj-Diouf replacing Varney and Kebe, with Peltier going to right back and Byram moving further forward. A bit harsh on Varney, but Kebe had run out of steam in the second half and started to make some basic errors.

By then Leicester had also made a couple of changes, one of which saw Kevin Phillips coming on up front, and the experienced striker would play a part in Leicester’s winner three minutes from time. When Moore crossed from the Leicester right he was aware that Nugent was behind him so he let the ball run through, and Nugent was able to evade Lees’ challenge before stabbing the ball home under Kenny’s dive.

With four minutes injury time available you would have expected Leeds to storm upfield and throw the kitchen sink at Leicester in a desperate attempt to equalise, but the final stages were strangely subdued and the visitors were able to hold on for the win without too much difficulty.

You can say that the luck favours a team who are in form and that the sign of a good side is that they will win games even when they haven’t played well. But that’s because good teams have good players at both ends of the field, so when they’re not having much of the possession they have keepers who can make vital saves and forwards who take their chances when they do come along.

It goes without saying that this performance will have restored everyone’s faith in Brian McDermott, and despite the defeat he will take a lot of heart from this game and have something to build on. But with next Saturday’s game being postponed we will have slipped further back into mid-table by the time we face Ipswich, and that game is starting to look vital, with the tractor boys being one of the sides we need to overtake to make the play-offs. We can but hope that we will be able to reproduce the sort of energy and commitment we managed today.

Photo: Action Images



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