Leeds slipped to another disappointing away defeat, against a Sheffield United who looked unrecognisable as the team who had won only one game in the last sixteen and slipped deep into relegation trouble.
Simon Grayson made only two changes to his starting line-up, with Becchio coming back in place of Paynter and Bannan getting his first Leeds start ahead of Kilkenny. It was irritating that the Blunts couldn’t sell all their tickets, with the crowd being over 6,000 short of capacity, while the Leeds contingent had been limited to 3,600. At least we can console ourselves with the thought that it wasn’t our club who was missing out on the extra cash, and the Leeds fans who couldn’t get tickets can be thankful they missed such a dire performance.
Right from the start the Blades worked very hard to close us down and deny Leeds possession, while we never seemed to be able to match this level of commitment. Grayson tried a change of formation, with Howson on the right and Gradel as a striker in a 4-4-2 formation, but it never really seemed to work. If he’s going to play two strikers then surely one of them has to be Somma.
We did have one decent chance early on when Lichaj’s cross from the right found Max with a bit of space at the far post, but he could only direct his header across the face of goal and beyond the far post. We didn’t know it then, but that was to be the closest we would ever come to scoring during the entire ninety minutes.
After that the home side started to dominate the possession, and we had Schmeichel to thank for keeping the scores level at half time. The Blades best chance came when a cross from the right and a clever flick-on found Bogdanovic completely unmarked in the centre, but thankfully Schmeichel was onto him very quickly to smother the shot with his legs. Our keeper also had to make saves from Evans and Quinn as the Sheffield mob kept up the pressure.
At the other end Becchio found it impossible to get going and Howson was well marshalled by Doyle. That’s the very same Doyle who did a good job for us as a defensive midfield player last season, but who Grayson decided not to sign on a permanent basis when he had the chance in the summer. Which is a shame, because we could do with a player in that position now to protect the back four. Although Bannan had a good game and played some intelligent passes, we have plenty of attacking midfield players in the squad already, and our priority should really be to strengthen elsewhere.
We started the second half with a bit more purpose, only to find ourselves a goal behind in the 54th minute. Quinn’s ball into the middle found Montgomery, and as Lichaj tried to intercept his ball across the face of goal he could only turn it into the net. The goal finally woke Leeds up a bit, and Bannan went close with a shot from distance. Then with 23 minutes remaining Grayson decided to make his first change, with Paynter coming on for the ineffectual Becchio.
But while we tried to get forward in search of an equaliser we were also guilty of giving the ball away too easily, and after one sloppy pass too many started the move that led to their second goal, in the 74th minute. Quinn twisted and turned on the right flank and found Riise in space, and the on-loan midfielder shot past Schmeichel from a fairly narrow angle and inside the far post.
In a last ditch attempt to get something from the game Grayson put Somma on for the last 15 minutes in place of Mc.Cartney, (singled out because both Blades goals had come from moves down his side) with Johnson switching to left back. The final sub saw Watt coming on for Snodgrass, and with some fresh legs on the field we did at least force a couple of corners, although with a two goal lead the Blades could afford to defend in depth to keep us out.
And our chances of getting a result finally ended in the 89th minute with the dismissal of Billy Paynter. He supposedly stamped on Lowry after both players jumped for the ball and the defender landed at Paynter’s feet. He can’t have stamped on him that hard if Lowry was able to get straight to his feet and start shoving Paynter, but the referee deemed Paynter to be guilty of violent conduct and gave him a straight red card.
And that was just about the last significant action before the final whistle. It emerged afterwards that Sheffield United had breached the rules by including six loan players in their squad when the teamsheet was handed to the referee, but one substitute was withdrawn and they had only six players on the bench. So it’s likely that they will get no more than a fine, as it’s just a technical breach of the rules and we can’t exactly claim that it had any bearing on the result.
So another disappointing result making it look ever more likely that we will fall short of winning automatic promotion and will have to make do with a place in the play-offs, though at least the results elsewhere were quite favourable. We should be OK for a place in the top six as long as our form at Elland Road holds up, with televised games still to come at home to all three of the teams immediately below us in the table.
MOT!