Dale 0 Leeds 1

Dale fell to a home defeat to Championship side Leeds with the winning goal coming in the first half from the highly rated Max Gradel.

As is the norm now with preseason friendlies, there were about a thousand changes during the game with our side being:

Duke, Darby, Widdowson (Twaddle), Trotman, Holness (Doig), Jarrett (Adams), Jones (Gray), Kennedy (Marshall), Tutte, Grimes (Hackney)), O'Grady (Akpa Akpro).

Few points from this game:

* Dale fans were probably outnumbered not far off 3 to 1, with a large number of away supporters amongst the 3,935 crowd. 

* The amount of money that we'd accept for Chris O'Grady has undoubtedly gone up, as after he went off after twenty minutes with a knock, we looked very weak up front indeed. His departure said more about his value to us than him scoring a hat trick could have done.

* The Dug Outs have been swapped round, with the home dug out now being the one closer to the Pearl Street Stand. Whispers at the game suggested that the switch has been done to avoid some of the main stand criticism that disappointed the previous managerial regime.

* We played some wonderful one touch football early on in the game, and one such play had us chalking up twenty odd passes on the trot.

* Andrew Tutte had an excellent game, both out wide and when drafted inside later in the game. He was full of running, and played with a vision. He had an excellent knack of bringing the ball forward too.

* The second half saw long periods of Leeds possession, though despite that they were unable to convert that possession into chances. Time will show whether that was down to our play of restricing the opposition or whether they were lazy in their play.

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