There was no shortage of passion and commitment either on the field or in the stands, but this tussle with West Ham United was a little bit short on goalmouth action. In the end, a draw was probably a fair result.
Our biggest crowd of the season created a terrific atmosphere inside Elland Road, with the crowd of 33,366 augmented by a large contingent from Scandanavia, who seemed to have a camera crew on hand to record their visit. There weren’t many spare seats, so if the crowd was 6,000 below capacity there can’t have been many in the upper East Stand, the only bit I couldn’t see from my place on the Kop. There was even a big away following for the first time since the visitors were switched to the West Stand, but perhaps everything is so expensive in London they didn’t realise that Bates was ripping them off.
Neil Warnock kept the same starting line-up who had played so well at Middlesbrough, and the Hammers line-up included our former loan player George McCartney, whose spell at Elland Road ended when he claimed that the players were worn out at the end of last season. Perhaps we should have had a chant of “you’re too tired to play for Leeds”.
As we might have expected from a game between sides managed by Warnock and Allardyce it was played at a very high tempo from the start with lots of commitment and a few naughty tackles, but without much quality or goalmouth action to show for it. West Ham had the first opportunity when Taylor flicked a ball on for to put Maynard through on the right hand side of the box, but Lonegran was very quickly off his line to deny the West Ham man a scoring opportunity.
Whenever Leeds went forward Snodgrass was quickly closed down by the West ham defence, and a couple of times the Scotsman lost possession by trying to beat too many defenders rather than pass the ball. But he did get one opportunity from a free kick when a clearance hit Taylor on the edge of the box, even though the Hammers player insisted the ball hit him on the chest. To be honest it looked like Taylor was right from the view I had from the kop, though it looked more like a handball from the angle shown on TV. Anyway, Snodgrass stepped up and hit the free kick just past the post.
We then got away with a similar incident at the other end when the ball hit Michael Brown in the face while his hands were close by. We also got lucky when a kick from Lonegran hit Maynard on the head and could have gone anywhere. Thankfully it went straight out of play rather than towards the goal, as with the speed of the rebound Lonegran would have struggled to get across to stop it.
Just before the break we thought we’d taken the lead when a long throw was flicked on by Becchio and Snodgrass neatly flicked the ball home, but the whistle had gone before he put the ball in the net. It was disallowed for a bit of pushing in the area, but on the TV replay it’s hard to see where the offence actually was.
Early in the second half the Hammers brought Carlton Cole on for Maynard, and the big man soon made his presence felt with a header that just cleared the bar. At the other end Leeds went very close once again from a free kick as Connolly got above the defence to head the ball towards the far corner, but Green got down to make an excellent save.
With so many hefty challenges going in it was inevitable that tempers would get a little bit frayed. Robinson was the first Leeds player to be booked and then immediately went in for another full blooded challenge. Thankfully he timed this one right and got the ball, as the slightest error would undoubtedly have seen him picking up a second yellow. Then a late tackle from Brown led to a melee developed with several players squaring up to each other, though I couldn’t see any need for all the West Ham players to rush over to get involved. The referee was already on the spot to deal with the incident and once he’d shown Brown the yellow card that should have been that.
Warnock made a double change on 76 minutes, with Webber and Forssell replacing White and McCormack, so at last we had a right footed player playing wide on the right. And eight minutes later we got the breakthrough.
After a corner was partially cleared Snodgrass knocked it back into the middle, and Green stretched to get a hand to the ball under pressure from O’Dea but couldn’t palm it out very far. The keeper was left stranded on the floor when Connolly’s header came back off the bar and Becchio was on hand to head the ball across the line. We thought that goal had secured another notable win for Warnock, but the Hammers came back to snatch a point in the last minute of normal time.
Mc.Cartney sent over a misdirected cross which could have been dipping under the bar, and Lonegran felt the need to palm it over the bar rather than risk catching it so close to his line. As the corner came in O’Dea was taken out by a push from Cole, leaving Collins to loop a header over 2 other defeders and past Lonegran into the corner of the net.
In his interview for the ‘Football League show’ Warnock justifiably said that Cole’s foul that led to West Ham’s equaliser was worse than Becchio’s when we had a goal disallowed, cue for an idiotic comment from Steve Claridge that Warnock was “trying to have it both ways”. He wasn’t “trying to have it both ways”, he was just asking for a little bit of consistency.
There were still four minutes of injury time, but the best we could produce was a header from Forrsel that lacked power and direction, and the battle had finished with honours even, probably a fair result. This result leaves us stuck in tenth place and still five points behind sixth place, but we’ve now finished our run of games against teams at the top of the table so you never know, we may still be able to sneak in for a place in the play-offs.