There was a strong sense of déjà vu at Turf Moor yesterday as Leeds repeated last year’s feat of coming from behind to Burnley in the second half with two goals from Robert Snodgrass, but in truth we nicked this win after looking very flat for most of the game.

The day began with a minute’s applause for the recently departed Jimmy Adamson, which was immaculately observed by the Leeds fans, even the ones old enough to remember his disastrous spell in charge of our club. The team news was that Simon Grayson had to make a couple of enforced changes to the starting line-up, with Sam coming in for the injured Pugh, and O’Dea coming back for O’Brien. It turned out that O’Brien has done a Tevez by refusing to play, and that he will never represent Leeds Unite again!

Burnley made a lively start and took the lead over ten minutes, with a goal that we might not have conceded if Pugh had been playing. Sam failed to track back as we lost possession, so when the ball was switched to the overlapping Trippier on the Burnley right he had plenty of time to get his cross in, as White was already preoccupied with marking their winger further forward. So Trippier was able to pick out the unmarked Rodriguez in the centre, as he ran between our two central defenders to score with a header in the six yard box.

And the hosts could have gone further in front as Treacy was able to skip between Snodgrass and Connolly, only for Mc.Carthy to keep him out with a fine save. For the first half hour it looked as though we hadn’t woken up yet, but we did have a good spell leading up to half time. Our first decent chance came when Grant came out of his box to block the ball as Keogh tried to chip him. Our players were sporting enough not to appeal even though it seemed to hit him on the arm, though I thought Clayton should have done better with his shot as the loose ball fell to him outside the box with Grant well off his line.

Mc.Cormack sent a free kick round the wall but straight at Grant, but at the other end Burnley went close again when Mc.Cann shot narrowly wide. And we were grateful to Mc.Carthy once again when Rodriguez got past the Leeds defence and our loan keeper saved in the one-on-one situation. Reading’s first choice keeper must be pretty good if he’s keeping this guy out of the side.

By now we were hoping that we would see another storming second half comeback after Grayson gave his players the rollocking they deserved at half time, but took a long time coming. It didn’t seem to be happening just after the break, when Mc.Carthy had to make another good save from a Treacy free kick and Burnley had a shout for a penalty after White challenged Bartley inside the box.

On the hour Grayson decided to liven things up by replacing Mc.Cormack and Keogh with Nunez and Becchio, but even then it didn’t look as though Leeds were going to get back into the game and when the equaliser finally came in the 77^th minute it came completely out of the blue. Sam crossed just beyond the far post and Snodgrass came in to score from close range. He was in so much space I had to check that he wasn’t offside before I started celebrating, but he hadn’t been , it’s just that the the Burnley defence had stopped moving when the cross came in.

And the turnaround was completed with three minutes remaining. A Nunez free kick was deflected wide for a corner, and when Snodgrass took it he moved quickly into the area for Nunez to pick him out with a return pass. When Snoddy took the ball down with his chest I thought for a second he was going to get closed down, but he placed the ball superbly past Grant and just inside the far post to put Leeds in front. Time to revive the “you should have gone Christmas shopping” chant we taunted the Burnley fans with last season.

There was a tense moment when Roriguez went close as the game moved into injury time, but we managed to hold on to complete our fourth win at Turf Moor in our last five visits. Of all those victories we will have to admit that this was the least deserved, but you know what they say about teams who can win when they haven’t played well. And we managed to hang onto fifth place even after all Saturday afternoon’s games had been played, so were certainly on course for making the play-offs at least this season.

Photo: Action Images

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