Milton Keynes Dons 3 Leeds United 1
This was yet another desperate defeat for Leeds, and it has proved to be Gary Mc.Allister’s last game in charge of Leeds United. Even though Ken Bates had been insisting all week that his rare appearance at an away game was part of his long-planned Christmas schedule and he wasn’t there to sack the boss, this morning he has done just that. A statement on the club’s official site has confirmed the inevitable, and Mr. Mc.Allister has been relieved of his duties.
This was yet another enjoyable day out, ruined by having sit through ninety minutes of football. My mate and I enjoyed some excellent hospitality from Franco, the editor of our sister ‘club fanzine’ site devoted the Milton Keynes Dons. He gave us a tour of the outside of the stadium, with a history lesson of how it all came about, and I’m sure it will all look very good when it’s finished. Once inside the scoreboard treated us to some classical footage of Led Zeppelin in concert, circa 1971, perhaps because the Dons chairman was keen to show us the few people on the planet who have even longer hair than him.
Apparently the size of the crowd was limited by the local authority, who won’t licence the MK Dons to use the full capacity of the stadium until they can prove they can handle a really big crowd. So there was quite a large ‘sterile’ area beside the away end, which could have been used to give Leeds an even bigger allocation. There were a couple of incidents involving Leeds fans being dragged out of the home end, which could perhaps have been avoided if they’d had more opportunit to buy tickets in the Leeds section.
The latest attempt to sort out our defensive chaos involved dropping Richardson and giving the new man Assoumani his debut, while Lubo came back to replace Telfer. With Prutton serving a one-match ban, Howson came back into midfield. We should have been a goal to the good inside three minutes, as Gueret failed to hold onto Howson’s long range shot and the ball fell to Snodgrass beyond the far post. He had to shoot from a narrow angle, but he was unchallenged and only had to put it on target, but all he could do was roll the ball across the face of the goal. This was the nearest we would get to scoring during the first half.
Instead, we went two behind in the next quarter of an hour, thanks to our all too familiar inability to defend from corners. From the first O’Hanlon stooped to get his head to the ball ahead of Rui, flicking it goalwards from a narrow angle, before it crept in past Lucas at his near post. And in the 17th. minute it was Assoumani’s turn to be surprised by the near post flick-on, allowing the ball to bounce off him, before a scramble on the line ended with Wilbrahams hooking the ball in.
At this stage we feared an absolute drubbing and the MK Dons fans were loving it, and created quite a decent atmosphere at the home end. Yet again we had a club’s biggest crowd of the season informing us that we’re not famous any more! But we managed to recover to some extent and enjoyed a bit of possession inside the MK half, though once again Becchio looked completely ineffective when left isolated as a lone striker. We did manage to get a couple of corners of our own, but unfortunately the Dons know how to defend from them.
At half time Macca decided that Lubo was more culpable than any of his other defenders and replaced him with Richarson, with Assoumani moving across into central defence. Just after the break Puncheon was close to putting the Dons further in front with a shot that just cleared the bar, but Leeds seemed to have given Mc.Allister a lifeline by pulling a goal back in the 48th. minute.
Frazer’s cross from the right came through to O’Donnel, but the Dons captain couldn’t get any force behind his clearing header, which looped up nicely for Snodgrass to score with a superb volley. At last the large Leeds following had something to cheer, and two minutes later Leeds had a shout for a penalty, (when even the placid Mc.Allister leapt off the bench to protest) but our claims for handball were waved away by the referee.
Any hopes of getting back into the game were killed off by yet another piece of slack defending as MK scored their third in the 55th. minute. At least it wasn’t from a set piece this time, but it came from pretty close to the corner flag as Johnson got past Frazer to cross from the left, and with the defenders out of position Wilbraham got in front of Douglas to loop his header over Lucas into the far corner.
For the rest of the game we continued to enjoy a decent amount of possession, but MK looked far more resolute in defence than Mc.Allister’s side could ever hope to be, and the closest we got to another goal was a free kick from Sheehan that curled across the goal, but just wide of the far post. Showumni came on for the final quarter of an hour but had little impact as Leeds ran out of time and went down to yet another disappointing defeat.
The result left us down in ninth place and five points adrift of the play-off positions. Despite Mc.Allister’s constant promises that the team was working hard on the training ground to iron out the problems in defence there was still no sign of any improvement on the pitch and by the end of this game Ken Bates had decided that he’d seen enough. Where do we go from here?
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