While everyone waited for the announcement of the result of Cellino’s appeal, there was the small matter of a game with Wigan Athletic yesterday lunchtime.

Brian McDermott decided to opt for a bit more experience as he tried to bring an end to our dismal run of results, so Michael Brown and Noel Hunt started in place of Aidy White and Alex Mowatt. To allow Hunt to play alongside Matt Smith up front, McCormack was pulled back to a role behind the front two, so although we enjoyed a lot of possession throughout the game, we lacked a bit of a cutting edge.

As ever, the 3,400 Leeds fans gave the team some excellent backing, and as the crowd was a bit sparse in the other three stands we were left to create most of the atmosphere. But both sets of fans took part in the minutes applause in the 14th minute, to mark the 14th anniversary of the murder of Chris Loftus and Kevin Speight in Istanbul.

Leeds had the better of the first half hour and our best move saw a flick on by Smith finding Hunt, who drew a smart save from Al Habsi, but in any case Hunt had been flagged for offside. And as always seems to happen this season, we then conceded a goal in the last 15 minutes of the first half.

McArthur outpaced Warnock down the Wigan right and played a one-two before going down under a challenge from Brown just outside the area. But the ball ran through to Waghorn, and although I thought for a second that Butland was going to save it, he could only get a slight touch on the ball and the ball slipped past him into the net.

Steve Claridge made a good point on the ‘Football League show’ last night, having spotted that Butland had stood still to appeal for something, and so wasn’t in the right position to dive across to save Waghorn’s shot. He might have been claiming that McArthur had dived after Brown’s tackle, and Brown bizarrely was protesting about a dive even after Waghorn had scored, even though the ref hadn’t given the foul!

That was certainly a lesson that you ought to play to the whistle. In the second half Leeds had even more of the game, forcing a series of corners soon after the break, to no avail. With 15 minutes left Hunt was replaced by Poleon, having once again worked very hard but rarely looking like scoring. And once again Poleon troubled the defence with his extra pace, but all too often there was no end product.

Our best effort in the closing stages came when Smith played McCormack through with a good ball, and the striker spotted Al Habsi off his line, but his chip curled just wide of the post. And that was about it, as Wigan held on without too much difficulty. As with the Burnley game last month, it was hard to believe that Leeds had lost despite having had so much of the possession in a difficult away game.

And so the GFH era came to an end. We probably need another three points to be certain of avoiding relegation, and it come to something when I had to look for Barnsley’s result later in the day and be glad they had failed to beat Brighton. But from now on Brian McDermott will be able to stop blaming the takeover for bad result, and we can but hope he can now guide us to better results for the rest of the season.

Photo: Action Images

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