QPR fought out a goalless draw on another long Tuesday night trip north.

1- The Match
A nervy goalless draw between two terrified looking sides. Leeds started well but soon fell away and Rangers should have taken the lead when Blackstock robbed Heath and ran through on goal but Ankergren saved. The Leeds keeper denied Bolder and Cook with great saves in the second half as well while at the other end David Healy smacked one against the bar. Leeds looked low on confidence and once they'd gone fifteen minutes without scoring they just got steadily worse, and the crowd got on their back with increased their problems.

A dull game for the neutral, a game QPR should have win after surviving the early storm.
5/10

2- Rangers' Performance
Much improved on the previous three 'six pointers' all of which had been lost. Cullip and Bolder gave the side more steel in defence and they looked good in possession as well. Sadly they couldn't capitalise and claim all three points. Blackstock ploughed the lone furrow up front really well but had a couple of chances to score and didn't take them - it's goals we need, and we can't afford many more of these one on one misses. In fairness Ankergren in the Leeds goal was in good form making excellent saves to deny Blackstock, Bolder and Cook.
7/10

3- Rangers' Support
Considering we'd had a Tuesday night fixture in Barnsley a fortnight before, and another Tuesday night in Derby to look forward to I thought the turn out from Rangers was pretty commendable. Why are we having to travel such distances on work nights when Colchester and Palace away were played on Saturdays? They made some noise as well. I'm not sure if it is gallows humour or something else but as the games drift by and we drift closer and closer to League One the away support seems to be getting louder and prouder. The constant choruses of "cheaper seats, that's why you're here" drew applause from some Leeds fans, and right hand knuckle shuffle signs from others so you could quickly tell which ones of them had stuck by their team to this point and which ones had suddenly crawled out of the woodwork in their Kewell/Viduka/Smith replica shirts.
8/10

4 - The Ground
It's hard to believe that Elland Road has, until very recently, been used to host full England internationals. It has an advantage over just about everything else in Leeds, the cricket ground especially, in that it's relatively easy to find but all the car parks feed onto one road and it's a swine to get away from afterwards. Inside apart from the ever impressive newer stand down the side, only half of which was open for our visit despite the ticket offer, the other three sides look and feel their age.

QPR fans were housed in the 'cheese wedge' yellow seats up in the corner where there are numerous pillars obstructing the view. The concourse area downstairs is a dark and gloomy jungle of concrete posts, plastic garden chairs and stands for betting and selling coffee. It's like a little, dank cave down there and it's not pleasant.

Leeds also have the ridiculous bar code ticket system in place at the gates. Why is this ridiculous? Well previously you had one turnstile and one man operating the turnstile and you handed your ticket over and went in. Now you have one turnstile, a steward in front of it explaining how it works and one the other side trouble shooting problems. So straight away the work force is double what it needs to be.

Whether it was a fault on the night, a permanent problem or that prat with the microphone messing up the speakers above the away end were left turned on for the entire match and an irritating high pitch cricket or mosquito type noise filled the away end throughout the match. I thought it was just me but headaches were reported all round in the car afterwards.

Thumbs up for having a bookies and selling beer in the away end as usual.

On the whole though this place is quickly turning into a bit of a dump. Still better than a plastic fantastic, out of town soulless bowl stadium though.
5/10

5 - Atmosphere
Leeds gave away cheap tickets while QPR gave away free coach travel which meant a much larger crowd than you would have expected for this one and a better atmosphere. The Leeds fans attempted the two songs they know before the kick off to get the players fired up but they were often interrupted and drowned out by that noisy tosser with the microphone at Elland Road. He seems universally disliked by home and away fans if the people we spoke to before the match are to be believed and yet he's still there every year, screaming down the microphone and telling the Leeds fans to get behind their players before they're even out on the pitch. Completely fails to understand the concept of a microphone and speaker system - you don't have to shout you dozy git, that's what the microphone is there for.

Once that twonk had been taken off and sedated the Leeds fans could get on with roaring their team on and although they started well nerves and anger at their side's performance started to creep in well before half time and by the hour mark the silence was only interrupted by the sound of booing and people leaving. Around the away end there was a rotund man with his young son in the new side stand who thought it was acceptable behaviour to keep turning round and giving it the big un to the away supporters, and encouraging his lad to do the same. Good on him, Father of the year right there.

On the other side there was a scrawny youth with a far away look in his eyes who responded to QPR's light hearted "cheaper seats, that's why you're here" chant by leaning over the dividing fence and making cut throat gestures at them. The Police just stood and watched him, he looked a little unhinged to me.

Anyway apart from those two morons the atmosphere was pretty good with both sets of fans doing their bit and it wasn't as hostile as I've experienced there in the past.
8/10

6- Pre-Match
Well I paid £5 for the privilege of parking on a rubble waste ground (these clubs really are taking the piss) and then headed to The Salters which is traditionally more of an away fans pub but for this one it was rammed with Leeds and not a QPR fan in sight. That made me feel slightly uncomfortable as I had to stand there on my own for twenty minutes while my mates arrived, they'd come on the train.

The Salters is not the best pub you'll ever go in. For a start the service is just about the slowest you'll experience anywhere in the world. There are several reasons for this, the first is they don't put enough staff on for a match night, and the ones they do have on happily chat away to each other behind the bar turning round to serve the punters every now and again when the mood takes them.

Another problem is Leeds United's policy of refusing admission to anybody who hasn't had at least three pints of Tetley's Cream Flow before the match. So you've got hundreds of people all wanting bloody cream flow which takes three minutes to pour in the Salters and that quickly creates a back log there. A third problem is that, by and large, the people queuing at the bar appear to be the kind of Yorkshiremen that got Yorkshiremen a bad name. The kind who think everybody wants to know their opinions, and feel these should be expressed to the bar staff before the drinks order is placed.

I got stuck behind one eejit who ordered his drinks by pointing to the pumps, which confused the poor barmaid to start with. Then he complained that his Carlsberg was going in a Carling glass and would therefore confuse him (not difficult) when he got back to his table, so off the bar maid goes to find another glass and comes back with a plastic one which of course wasn't good enough so in the end she had to wash a dirty one for him. Now I'm not being funny but what kind of moron queues for twenty minutes to get to a bar, has a twenty minute queue behind him when he gets there but decides to hold it up by being a smart arsed cock, pointing at the pumps instead of naming the drink and complaining about the glasses it comes in?

Eventually the pub became so full and hot that we bailed out and drank outside on the dual carriageway. Didn't partake in the food after a bad experience here a few seasons back, and the lack of seats, and that looked to be a mistake at first. Three or four gorgeous looking steaks passed me by while I was in the queue but within half an hour either stocks were low or the chef couldn't be bothered because the "main courses" we saw being delivered to tables were unacceptable and a couple were duly sent back.
4/10

7- The Journey
Basically see what I wrote for Barnsley. Out of Derby at a little before 5pm and onto the M1 where I was met with the usual procession of idiots who upon joining the motorway immediately head for the outside lane and sit there at 60mph clogging the whole road up and causing volume of traffic related snarl ups. Next time you are in the outside lane look at your speedometer. Are you doing 70mph or less? If so move aside immediately, you shouldn't be there, you should be in the middle lane. Next time you are in the middle lane have a look around. Are you a lorry? If so pull to the side immediately, you should be on the inside lane.

Roadworks at Sheffield were a pain - who's come up with this "average speed check" idea for roadworks? May they burn in hell.

Leeds is consistently a pain to drive in. The whole place is made up of a series of semi circles so you join a road, you drive for five miles and then you find you're actually heading in the opposite direction to where you need to be so you join another semi circle and repeat and repeat until you're hopelessly lost. Still the only place in the world where a four lane motorway can go down to two lanes and then branch off into two completely separate roads forcing drivers from the outside lane wanting to stay on the same road to veer across four lanes of traffic to do so all within a quarter of a mile.

The whole place looks like it was designed by the idiot in front of me in the queue at the pub. Told by everybody in transport planning that he was a know nothing idiot with a vacuous space between his ears he ignored them and did what he wanted anyway.
3/10

8- Police/Stewards
Normally Leeds is second only to anywhere in the West Midlands Police force range for hostility, incompetence and nastiness from the police and stewards but this season thankfully they left well alone. There was even an exceptionally fit blonde police lady for the relived Rangers fans to admire on the way out.

Mercifully there was no sign of the black bomber jacket brigade this season. At sporting events in Leeds there are stewards and police officers like anywhere else in the country, but Elland Road, and both Headingley grounds also hire a third party to keep order. Basically a gang of hired muscle in black bomber jackets who mingle in with the crowd and then suddenly pounce and violently eject people from the stadiums.

Now I know what you're thinking, don't go looking for trouble and trouble won't find you, and normally I'd agree but these guys are unreal. I once spent an afternoon at the cricket at Headingley and everybody around me was having a great time. Few drinks, plenty of sun, good game of cricket, and yet for the entire match these lobotomised gibbons watched us through binoculars from a balcony and regularly swooped in to throw people out. And when these people throw you out you know you've been thrown. I have seen these thugs wade into a group of twelve men dressed as Smurfs and violently drag them out by their nappies for committing the heinous crime of forming a long snake with their empty plastic glasses and raising it above their heads.

They were at Elland Road last year, grabbing QPR fans by the scruff of the neck for standing up and singing, but were thankfully absent this year. Maybe there was a function on at the zoo or something.
8/10

Total- 48/80

Photo: Action Images

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