Sunday Times 7/9/08
Gary McAllister can see the light
Leeds 5 Crewe 2
John Aizlewood at Elland Road
EVEN at the end of the longest, darkest night, there must be a dawn. For troubled Leeds United, it just might have come with a demolition of Crewe Alexandra so absurdly one-sided that, for a moment, the notion held by Elland Road diehards that their team are marooned at a level two tiers below their natural station did not seem entirely quixotic.
Yet the prematch storm clouds with gathered over Yorkshire were not wholly meteorological. Leeds kicked off without a league victory since the season’s opening day and much as their supporters invoked a now imaginary rivalry with Manchester United, Elland Road was half-empty.
“There was pressure before the game,” admitted manager Gary McAllister. “But for 90 minutes we were perfect. What happened after that reminded us that football can kick you in the backside as well.”
Indeed, when the dust had settled, the only surprises were that Leeds had just five scores to their name and that after failing to muster a solitary attempt on goal in 90 minutes, their wretched visitors somehow struck twice in a surreal added time. Their manager, Steve Holland, failed to attend the postmatch press conference.
Leeds did all the right things. Outmuscled by Crewe’s diminutive centre-backs Daniel O’Donnell and Julian Baudet, they attacked down both flanks and might have gone ahead twice before their first goal. Danny Woodards cleared Andrew Hughes’s looping header off the line, and Fabian Delph’s glorious crossfield ball picked out Jermaine Beckford, who swivelled past Woodards only for Steve Collis to parry his drive.
Delph was not to be denied. When the erstwhile England youth international collected a loose ball some 25 yards out there seemed no danger, but he shot low past the heavy-legged Collis for the teenager’s maiden first-team goal.
That knocked what little stuffing there was out of powder-puff Crewe, for whom there was much worse to come. Hughes picked out overlapping full-back Alan Sheehan who, from a similar distance to Delph, belted home a spectacular second with Collis once again far from spring-heeled.
Four minutes after the break, Jonathan Douglas beat Collis from what was becoming a customary 20 yards. Wholly dispirited, Crewe’s bedraggled defenders began to bicker amongst themselves; Leeds rampaged forward at will.
Chance piled upon chance as Leeds toyed with their mouse-like prey like an especially malevolent feline. They finally scored from inside the penalty area in the 68th minute, when the unmarked Beckford nonchalantly nodded Andy Robinson’s cross past Collis.
The barrel-chested Robinson chipped delicately against Collis’s bar, but his redemption, and McAllister’s goal, the pick of the five, came with a delightful curler, yet again from distance.
The noncontest long won, Leeds fell asleep during added time. First, Lubomir Michalik was dismissed for hauling down Clayton Donaldson and Billy Jones’s 30-yard free-kick bobbled apologetically into goal. Then, with the game’s freakish last hurrah, Eugene Bopp’s fierce drive took a wicked deflection off Douglas and came to rest in David Lucas’s net.
Star man:Fabian Delph (Leeds)
LEEDS:Lucas 6; Richardson 7, Michalik 6, Telfer 6, Sheehan 6; Hughes 7 (Howson 64min; 6), Douglas 7, Kilkenny 6 (Robinson 64min; 7), Delph 8; Becchio 6 (Snodgrass 69min; 6), Beckford 7
CREWE:Collis 4; Woodards 4, Baudet 5, O’Donnell 5, Jones 5; Rix 4 (Bopp 63min; 5), Bailey 4, Schumacher 4, Moore 4; Zola 4, Elding 4 (Donaldson 63min; 5)