"1 0 to the referee", "the football leagues' corrupt", and "we only get shit refs" - these are the songs that the faithful sang from the tenth minute onward.Whilst I agree with these sentiments to a degree, to suggest that 'we wuz robbed' is misleading to say the least. We did not have a single shot on target until the 92nd minute, one header into the keepers arms the best we could manage. Brentford on the other hand tested Silvestri on any number of occasions, so much so that there is a shout for him being our mom. 3 times he saved us when they had players through one on one etc. We had a scramble in injury time that nearly made Cani and instant hero but his, and Sharps, shots were blocked on or near the line. Morison should have kept it down / put it across the box but chose to go for goal and hit it too high from an impossible angle and Sharp had a great shot that just went wide of the post. Not much to show for 90+ minutes of football at home. So why all the vitriol towards the officials ? Firstly and mainly there were the 3 shouts for a penalty. Twice our rough , tough, strong as an ox midfielder Rudy went down in the box at the slightest touch. On the one at the Kop end a decent left foot would have meant a goal rather than falling over ? The other one also did not look like a penalty to me. Add to that Sharp being muscled out by 2 of them in the 6 yard box and some fans were far from happy. 2 of their 3 breakaways looked offside and their goal came from a free kick taken quickly and from the wrong place.(and I have since been told there was a handball by them in the build up) We did not seem to get a decision all afternoon and so I can understand why fans were unhappy, but it would be churlish and wrong to put this defeat down to the referee.We never really got going and our lack of width meant that once again, 4 4 2 does not suit the players we have at our disposal. Sharp is a goal poacher but there is not much else to his game, and so, when we were not getting the ball into the dangerous areas he is largely ineffective. We will play worse than this and win - Bamba and Cooper look like a decent pairing, Taylor again looked untroubled defensively and has something to offer going forward, Wootton who I put into the 'Noel Hunt, I will be happy never to see him a Leeds shirt again category' again showed that he does have something to offer. Morison worked hard but never looked like scoring and Murphy and Austin had their moments. Cani was only on the pitch for the last 10minutes or so but showed enough in that time to suggest he may have a future at the club.So overall we could and should have been better and perhaps a draw would have been a fairer result since we did not do enough to warrant 3 points. I have been told both that other results at the bottom went our way so it was not as bad as it could have been and we can recover quickly away at Reading and even more so with a win next week in the 6 pointer v Millwall One final comment -Lewis Cook. To me he is the best young player since Delph, even better than Byram, and given his age (18 today) he is a real talent and a real treasure - BUT he had almost turned into Batty as far as goal threat is concerned on a couple of occasions today, one in particular, he found himself in a great shooting position but chose to pass instead. I know some players are goal makers not scorers but given a chance to score no player can afford to not have a go. Secondly he always wants to make the killer pass when he gets forward and it was often just that few feet away from being right. He needs, especially at this level when his colleagues are not as good as him, to go for the percentage ball. I do not want to criticise him but a few times today I just thought he got it wrong and not for the first time So overall a bad day but not disastrous Dave _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email [email protected]
John 'Grampa' Sykes Rest In Peace old lad 28th Oct 1938 - 12 Nov 2013 MARCHING ON TOGETHER
