Leeds suffered a humiliating defeat last night in an amazing game against Nottingham Forest, and surely we can now forget about those lingering hopes of getting into the play-offs. Neil Warnock said afterwards that “Going back to my Sunday league days I’d have been embarrassed to concede some of those goals”.
Warnock named an unchanged starting line-up for this game, but later admitted that this might have been a mistake, with his side looking very tired after their efforts against West Ham, against a fresh Forest side who didn’t have a game at the weekend. And most of the crowd were also a bit worn out after reaching fever pitch against the Hammers, with only 21,000 Leeds fans in the ground and an atmosphere that was flat to say the least.
After a minute’s applause for Fabrice Muamba, Forest began the game with a warning of what was to come, finding plenty of space in the Leeds area and hitting the post after a good move down the right. But it was Leeds who took the lead after McCormack went down after a challenge from Guediora, and Snodgrass stepped up to hammer the penalty right into the top corner as Camp dived the wrong way.
We might have thought that we were on the way to a comfortable victory, but Guediora made amends for giving away the penalty in spectacular style only two minutes later. After Leeds had failed to clear an attack he collected the ball and went past Brown, but there seemed little danger as he tried a shot from fully 40 yards. Yet the shot had plenty of power and although Lonegran got close to it he never managed to lay a finger on the ball.
Leeds seemed deflaterd by that equaliser and for the rest of the half Forest were allowed to run the game, while our midfield seemed almost non-existent. McCleary sent a couple of shots over the bar, but he found his range just before the break when he was allowed to run down the right completely unchallenged. Lonegran got a hand to his shot and for a second I thought he must have turned it over the bar, but instead it just looped up in the air and dropped into the far corner of the net.
No worries I thought, Warnock will give them a rollocking for their poor first half display and Leeds will come out and take control of the game after the break. The manager replaced White with Webber to give us another option going forward, but after the restart Forest were still looking the better side.
And the visitors went further in front in the 51st minute, to start a crazy period of five goals in only eight minutes. On this occasion I thought we were unlucky to concede, as there appeared to be a foul on Brown inside the Forest half before they broke away, and Reid might have pulled Clayton back on the edge of the area before he delivered his cross, but Blackstock rose above the Leeds defence at the far post to head home.
But only two minutes later Becchio brought the crowd back to life as it was Forest’s turn to fail to pick up their man, and the Argentinian was given plenty of space to score from six yards out. And then Brown equalised with his first Leeds goal, and it was well worth waiting for as he flicked the ball up with his left foot and hammered a right foot volley into the corner of the net from outside the box.
With more than half an hour remaining I confidently expected Leeds to go on to win the game, but McCleary put Forest back in front a minute later, and this time I thought that Lonegran could have done much better with the shot. By now Andy Reid was on the receiving end of a few chants suggesting that he looks slightly tubby, but he had the last laugh when he put another good ball across the face of goal in the 58th. minute for McCleary to complete his hat-trick. After that we had to wait a full 13 minutes for the next goal, partly because Camp made an excellent save to keep out a well-struck shot from Snodgrass.
Things got a bit fraught when Leeds built a counter-attack while a Forest player lay injured on the floor and refused to put the ball out, but in my opinion we were perfectly justified in doing so. Forest were in possession when the player first went down and chose to carry on because they were attacking, and if they weren’t going to put it out for their own player to receive treatment then why should we?
By this time a knackered Robinson had been replaced by Danny Pugh, but Pugh fared no better against the rampant McCleary, as the Forest man left him for dead as he cut inside to shoot past Lonegran for the sixth. And the scoring wad completed with nine minutes left, with Blackstock looking well offside as he raced onto a through ball before placing his shot into the far corner.
Billy Paynter made a cameo appearance for the last ten minutes and got the usual sarcastic cheers, but although he ran about enthusiastically he never looked like doing anything useful. Despite Leeds efforts to grab a consolation there was no more scoring, and most of the home fans had already left by the time to referee put us all out of our misery with the final whistle.
Some of the other results went our way on the night, but that’s no good if we can’t pick up points ourselves to take advantage, and this result has probably killed off any lingering hopes we might have had of getting into the play-offs. Perhaps this was a fluke game when nearly everything that Forest hit flew into the net and it’s not likely to happen again, but Warnock now knows he’s got some serious work to do in sorting out the defence for next season. Let’s hope he can get it right.