Leeds seemed to be controlling the game for the first 20 minutes, but then our heads went down after we gave two soft goals away and Hull City never looked back.
The evening started with a demonstration against Bates outside the East Stand, involving an estimated 300 Leeds fans, and according to Radio Leeds some of them had temporarily stopped boycotting matches so they could be at Elland Road for this demo. So much for Bates saying that the “morons”, are stopping investment coming into the club, the demos are bringing the club a bit extra in gate money!
Even so, the attendance was a paltry 19,750, and that included at least 2,000 from Hull. I would have loved to have joined the demo, but I was seriously delayed on the motorway and only just got to my seat before kick-off, which was fortunate because at least I was there in time to see the bit when the Leeds performance was worth watching.
As expected, Diouf played up front in place of Mc.Cormack, though he was often seen drifting wide to leave Becchio as the lone central striker. Drury had also failed to recover from an injury suffered at Cardiff, which left White playing at left back, and during the course of the game our defence was found to be rather more brittle as a result.
But it all started so well, with Leeds putting Hull under pressure from the start, and taking the lead with a penalty in the seventh minute. The referee wasn’t going to give it until the linesman called him over, and the Hull players were furious, thinking that Diouf had gone to ground rather too easily. As if he would! Becchio stepped up to take the spot kick and just about squeezed it home, even though Amos went the right way.
And we had chances to increase the lead, first when Austin had a shot blocked in the six yard box, then when Diouf cut inside from the right and would have scored if he hadn’t put his shot straight at Amos. But the turning point in the game came with Hull’s equaliser in their first attack of the game on 23 minutes. White had got sucked into the middle and he and Lees got in each other’s way as they tried to clear the ball on the edge of the box, and only succeeded it knocking it straight to Elmohamady.
The Egyptian was standing unmarked in the position where White should have been, and he had time to take a touch before shooting accross Kenny into the far corner. This brought Hull to life and they took advantage of some more poor defending six minutes later, with Faye completely unmarked at the far post as he headed home from a right wing cross. This sent the Dullards in the West Stand into an absolute frenzy as they celebrated by letting off an orange coloured flare.
From then on Hull began to dominate possession and it was impossible to see how Leeds could get back into the game. Early in the second half Becchio added to our injury problems when he was taken off after going down for treatment twice in a short space of time, to be replaced by Poleon. The youngster made a couple of good runs, and our forward play started to look a bit more imaginative when we no longer had the temptation to lump it towards Becchio every time.
But it was another injury that caused a furious reaction from the crowd as a promising Leeds attack was stopped when a Hull player went down clutching his face on the halfway line. Nobody had seen what had caused him to go down, but to be fair to the referee it’s a FIFA guideline that he has to stop play for a head injury, so he didn’t deserve the abuse he was getting from the crowd. It’s possible that this incident led to the third Hull goal, as we then threw players forward in a frenzy for the next attack, which just left us short of numbers at the back when Hull broke away.
The visitors took advantage with a passing move down their right while Koren was able to make an unchallenged run down the other side, and when the ball was played across the face of the goal he was left with a simple tap-in at the far post. It wasn’t long before large numbers of the crowd started to head for the exit, while the “Bates out” chants rang out from those who remained and the fans in the south stand waved their “7 years of lies” banner.
Warnock’s last attempt to get back into the game was to replace the ineffectual Varney with Gray, and it was Gray who gave us a lifeline when he headed home from a corner as we went into injury time. An extra five minutes was announced and this was extended for some blatant time-wasting, but although we raised the tempo to try to grab an equaliser, Hull were able to hold out to inflict our first home defeat of the season.
And I have to say that this was the worst performance I’ve seen this season, as we at least showed a bit of spirit in the Blackpool and Cardiff defeats, but there wasn’t much of that in evidence last night. We suffered from a serious lack of quality all over the pitch and as we drop into the bottom half of the table it’s looking like yet another wasted season under the chairmanship of Ken Bates.