Telegraph 4/2/10
Robert Snodgrass can lead Leeds United to promised land
There is a perverse pleasure taken by Leeds fans in the anonymity granted by their fall from grace and glory to destitution and despair.
By Rory Smith
It is a survival mechanism, denying rivals the opportunity to remind them of their travails by pre-empting the jibe. Leeds United, for six long years, have claimed they are not famous any more. Time for a new edition of the song-book.
It may have taken the unlikeliest of FA Cup adventures to bring Leeds back to public consciousness, victory at Old Trafford and sheer, dogged bloody-mindedness dragging Simon Grayson’s side to a last-gasp, last-ditch draw atTottenham Hotspur but Leeds are back indeed. In truth, they never went away. Elland Road is home to the sort of enduring fame which never truly ebbs, never fades.
It is there in the stands, where the fans, deafening, snarling and broiling, took less than 15 minutes to wrap scarves around fists, three sides of the ground dotted by flashes of twirling white as they urged Grayson’s team forward. It is a habit Leeds caught in Europe, a regular feature of Champions League nights. It has never gone away.
And, increasingly, it is there on the pitch too. White Hart Lane proved Old Trafford was not a fluke. Here, Leeds could have been four down at half time, had Jermain Defoe showed the sort of clinical touch in front of goal he possessed before Christmas. Yet still they clung to Spurs’s coat-tails, clawing their way back from a goal down to Champions League pretenders.
Grayson does not possess a team which is a patch on the generation which made Leeds contenders to win that competition 10 years ago, not merely enter it, the limit of Harry Redknapp’s ambition at this stage.
But in Jonny Howson, the Armley-born midfielder who stood on the Kop, scarf swinging, as Deportivo La Coruna, AC Milan and Lazio were felled beneath Yorkshire’s wall of sound, they have a passable impersonation of a young Lee Bowyer, filled with channelled aggression and attacking instincts.
He is not the only player who offers Elland Road a reminder that before the bust, there was a boom. The Premier League was well aware of Jermaine Beckford long before his exploits at the homes of football’s rich and famous last month, and the expiry of his deal at Leeds this summer will no doubt attract the attention of countless managers struggling to adapt to the strictures of football’s collapsed economy.
Robert Snodgrass, though, is the jewel in the crown, blessed with the sort of gifts which, though raw, are fit for the stage Elland Road was, and has no doubt it will be again. Beckford represents a gamble for the top flight.
The young Scot is the nearest approximation the lower leagues can produce to a sure thing.
His every touch sends a jolt of electricity around the stands, his footwork fleet enough to bear comparison to the Premier League superstars, the millionaire household names, who Leeds have discovered a taste for embarrassing.
The fans, of course, hope that he will stay, shunning the riches of the Premier League in the short-term to guide them from the wilderness back to the promised land. The west Riding’s paupers, from the country’s great one team city, know they need him to continue to bewitch them if their exile is to end, if their return to fame is to be guaranteed, if the self-deprecation is to stop.
Sky 4/2/10
Boss proud of Leeds effort
Bosses heap praise on United Cup performance
Leeds United boss Simon Grayson believes his side came out of their FA Cup defeat to Tottenham Hotspur with a lot of credit.
The League One high fliers' fine cup run eventually ended courtesy of Jermain Defoe's hat-trick in a 3-1 fifth round replay defeat.
But Grayson did not carry the look of a crestfallen manager after the game and was clearly proud of his players' performance in front of a passionate Elland Road full house.
He said: "We were very good again. We passed the ball around well and competed ever so well against a top team in the Premier League.
"That's all we said to the players - give a good account of yourself and do yourselves justice.
"Nobody expected us to win apart from maybe 33,000 inside the ground and the players, but we like to think we've come out of it with a lot of credit."
Spurs boss Harry Redknapp was full of praise for the Yorkshiremen, who had pushed his side all the way after their famous third-round upset atManchester United.
"These are difficult games," Redknapp added. "I've won and lost these games when you're fancied to win.
"We came to Elland Road - probably the first time for some of my players. The atmosphere the fans created was just incredible.
"This is a massive football club. It's really a Premier League club and it needs to get back where it belongs.
"Leeds are a good side and they'll certainly go up this year and I can see them being back in the Premier League in the next few years."
Guardian 3/2/10
Jermain Defoe's hat-trick brings battling Leeds United's run to an end
Harry Polkey
Beating Hartlepool away next Saturday is, in the greater scheme of things, more important to Leeds United than knocking Tottenham Hotspur out of the FA Cup, but no-one who saw this
hugely committed and at times frantic cup tie could accuse the United players of harbouring their resources. As at Manchester United in the third round, and 10 days ago at White Hart Lane, the Yorkshire side produced a performance which both belied their League One status and suggested that if they do not get promoted this season, something at Elland Road will have gone very wrong.
After all, they are not going to come up against finishers of the quality of Jermain Defoe, whose hat-trick was his third of the season. The Spurs manager, Harry Redknapp, suggested afterwards that the England striker could have scored six and Bolton, their opponents in the next round, will be wary. But United created plenty of chances, and the result was in doubt until Defoe's third, deep into stoppage time.
Despite their insistence that the pressure was on their opponents, there was scope for the Leeds players to be nervous in front of an impressively raucous full house of more than 38,000. It did not take long for the underdogs to settle, however. Picked out by Michael Doyle, Jonny Howson curled a neat shot 18 inches over the bar, rather closer to the target than Sébastien Bassong's side-footed volley at the other end soon afterwards. On a pitch still greasy after an hour or so of wet snow before kick-off, the pace in the opening period was unrelenting.
Defoe was the next to go close, driving just wide from 18 yards, but again Leeds responded. Leigh Bromby's looping cross should have been an easy gather for Heurelho Gomes inside his own six-yard box, but Jermaine Beckford's remarkable spring saw the striker, who has already scored 24 goals this season, get his forehead above the Spurs goalkeeper's reaching hands. Somehow the ball came back off the bar.
If Gomes was unconvincing, his opposite number, Casper Ankergren, was at his best when Defoe beat the offside trap, getting enough on the shot to divert it wide. The Danish goalkeeper also had to react quickly when Bromby's accidental deflection of Gareth Bale's cross threatened to sneak in at his near post.
So well was Ankergren playing, in fact, that it took a huge slice of fortune for Spurs to beat him. There was nothing lucky about the run and pull-back with which the impressive David Bentley left Defoe free in the penalty area, but a poor first touch meant the subsequent left-foot shot was badly sliced. With Ankergren hopelessly wrong-footed, the ball drifted over Richard Naylor and inside the angle of post and bar.
Stung by the injustice, for the remainder of the half Leeds flung themselves forward. Moments before the break the pressure finally told, when Beckford's swivelling volley was saved by Gomes, but Luciano Becchio followed up to turn the ball over the line.
While lucky not to be ruled out for offside, the equaliser was nothing less than Leeds deserved after the most hectic 45 minutes of football that Spurs must have been involved in for some time, and the half-time message from Redknapp can only have been to calm down and try and impose their superior passing game. For five minutes after the restart they did exactly that, and should have retaken the lead when a sliding Peter Crouch came within inches of turning Nico Kranjcar's cross-shot past Ankergren.
Leeds did their best to up the pace, but the conviction that characterised their first-half efforts was no longer so apparent. Sensing the change Spurs began, if not to relax, to play with a little more belief, and Ankergren had to save well, first from Michael Dawson and then from a rising Bentley drive.
He was beaten shortly after the hour, only for Defoe to be ruled offside, but the tide was increasingly strong, and in the 73rd minute Leeds finally cracked. It was no great surprise that Bentley, on the right, should be the provider with a low driven cross, nor that Defoe, from close range, should provide the finishing touch.With the crowd finally quietened, the Leeds manager, Simon Grayson, turned to his bench, but the gulf in resources was obvious. Even so, only when Defoe rounded Ankergren in stoppage time could Redknapp relax. "I thought we were very good, we competed ever so well against a top, top team," said Grayson. "Now we have to try and make sure we finish the job we have started in the league. The players are disappointed now, but they should feel a lot better about themselves in the morning, they can be proud of what they have achieved so far this season."
Robert Snodgrass can lead Leeds United to promised land
There is a perverse pleasure taken by Leeds fans in the anonymity granted by their fall from grace and glory to destitution and despair.
By Rory Smith
It is a survival mechanism, denying rivals the opportunity to remind them of their travails by pre-empting the jibe. Leeds United, for six long years, have claimed they are not famous any more. Time for a new edition of the song-book.
It may have taken the unlikeliest of FA Cup adventures to bring Leeds back to public consciousness, victory at Old Trafford and sheer, dogged bloody-mindedness dragging Simon Grayson’s side to a last-gasp, last-ditch draw atTottenham Hotspur but Leeds are back indeed. In truth, they never went away. Elland Road is home to the sort of enduring fame which never truly ebbs, never fades.
It is there in the stands, where the fans, deafening, snarling and broiling, took less than 15 minutes to wrap scarves around fists, three sides of the ground dotted by flashes of twirling white as they urged Grayson’s team forward. It is a habit Leeds caught in Europe, a regular feature of Champions League nights. It has never gone away.
And, increasingly, it is there on the pitch too. White Hart Lane proved Old Trafford was not a fluke. Here, Leeds could have been four down at half time, had Jermain Defoe showed the sort of clinical touch in front of goal he possessed before Christmas. Yet still they clung to Spurs’s coat-tails, clawing their way back from a goal down to Champions League pretenders.
Grayson does not possess a team which is a patch on the generation which made Leeds contenders to win that competition 10 years ago, not merely enter it, the limit of Harry Redknapp’s ambition at this stage.
But in Jonny Howson, the Armley-born midfielder who stood on the Kop, scarf swinging, as Deportivo La Coruna, AC Milan and Lazio were felled beneath Yorkshire’s wall of sound, they have a passable impersonation of a young Lee Bowyer, filled with channelled aggression and attacking instincts.
He is not the only player who offers Elland Road a reminder that before the bust, there was a boom. The Premier League was well aware of Jermaine Beckford long before his exploits at the homes of football’s rich and famous last month, and the expiry of his deal at Leeds this summer will no doubt attract the attention of countless managers struggling to adapt to the strictures of football’s collapsed economy.
Robert Snodgrass, though, is the jewel in the crown, blessed with the sort of gifts which, though raw, are fit for the stage Elland Road was, and has no doubt it will be again. Beckford represents a gamble for the top flight.
The young Scot is the nearest approximation the lower leagues can produce to a sure thing.
His every touch sends a jolt of electricity around the stands, his footwork fleet enough to bear comparison to the Premier League superstars, the millionaire household names, who Leeds have discovered a taste for embarrassing.
The fans, of course, hope that he will stay, shunning the riches of the Premier League in the short-term to guide them from the wilderness back to the promised land. The west Riding’s paupers, from the country’s great one team city, know they need him to continue to bewitch them if their exile is to end, if their return to fame is to be guaranteed, if the self-deprecation is to stop.
Sky 4/2/10
Boss proud of Leeds effort
Bosses heap praise on United Cup performance
Leeds United boss Simon Grayson believes his side came out of their FA Cup defeat to Tottenham Hotspur with a lot of credit.
The League One high fliers' fine cup run eventually ended courtesy of Jermain Defoe's hat-trick in a 3-1 fifth round replay defeat.
But Grayson did not carry the look of a crestfallen manager after the game and was clearly proud of his players' performance in front of a passionate Elland Road full house.
He said: "We were very good again. We passed the ball around well and competed ever so well against a top team in the Premier League.
"That's all we said to the players - give a good account of yourself and do yourselves justice.
"Nobody expected us to win apart from maybe 33,000 inside the ground and the players, but we like to think we've come out of it with a lot of credit."
Spurs boss Harry Redknapp was full of praise for the Yorkshiremen, who had pushed his side all the way after their famous third-round upset atManchester United.
"These are difficult games," Redknapp added. "I've won and lost these games when you're fancied to win.
"We came to Elland Road - probably the first time for some of my players. The atmosphere the fans created was just incredible.
"This is a massive football club. It's really a Premier League club and it needs to get back where it belongs.
"Leeds are a good side and they'll certainly go up this year and I can see them being back in the Premier League in the next few years."
Guardian 3/2/10
Jermain Defoe's hat-trick brings battling Leeds United's run to an end
Harry Polkey
Beating Hartlepool away next Saturday is, in the greater scheme of things, more important to Leeds United than knocking Tottenham Hotspur out of the FA Cup, but no-one who saw this
hugely committed and at times frantic cup tie could accuse the United players of harbouring their resources. As at Manchester United in the third round, and 10 days ago at White Hart Lane, the Yorkshire side produced a performance which both belied their League One status and suggested that if they do not get promoted this season, something at Elland Road will have gone very wrong.After all, they are not going to come up against finishers of the quality of Jermain Defoe, whose hat-trick was his third of the season. The Spurs manager, Harry Redknapp, suggested afterwards that the England striker could have scored six and Bolton, their opponents in the next round, will be wary. But United created plenty of chances, and the result was in doubt until Defoe's third, deep into stoppage time.
Despite their insistence that the pressure was on their opponents, there was scope for the Leeds players to be nervous in front of an impressively raucous full house of more than 38,000. It did not take long for the underdogs to settle, however. Picked out by Michael Doyle, Jonny Howson curled a neat shot 18 inches over the bar, rather closer to the target than Sébastien Bassong's side-footed volley at the other end soon afterwards. On a pitch still greasy after an hour or so of wet snow before kick-off, the pace in the opening period was unrelenting.
Defoe was the next to go close, driving just wide from 18 yards, but again Leeds responded. Leigh Bromby's looping cross should have been an easy gather for Heurelho Gomes inside his own six-yard box, but Jermaine Beckford's remarkable spring saw the striker, who has already scored 24 goals this season, get his forehead above the Spurs goalkeeper's reaching hands. Somehow the ball came back off the bar.
If Gomes was unconvincing, his opposite number, Casper Ankergren, was at his best when Defoe beat the offside trap, getting enough on the shot to divert it wide. The Danish goalkeeper also had to react quickly when Bromby's accidental deflection of Gareth Bale's cross threatened to sneak in at his near post.
So well was Ankergren playing, in fact, that it took a huge slice of fortune for Spurs to beat him. There was nothing lucky about the run and pull-back with which the impressive David Bentley left Defoe free in the penalty area, but a poor first touch meant the subsequent left-foot shot was badly sliced. With Ankergren hopelessly wrong-footed, the ball drifted over Richard Naylor and inside the angle of post and bar.
Stung by the injustice, for the remainder of the half Leeds flung themselves forward. Moments before the break the pressure finally told, when Beckford's swivelling volley was saved by Gomes, but Luciano Becchio followed up to turn the ball over the line.
While lucky not to be ruled out for offside, the equaliser was nothing less than Leeds deserved after the most hectic 45 minutes of football that Spurs must have been involved in for some time, and the half-time message from Redknapp can only have been to calm down and try and impose their superior passing game. For five minutes after the restart they did exactly that, and should have retaken the lead when a sliding Peter Crouch came within inches of turning Nico Kranjcar's cross-shot past Ankergren.
Leeds did their best to up the pace, but the conviction that characterised their first-half efforts was no longer so apparent. Sensing the change Spurs began, if not to relax, to play with a little more belief, and Ankergren had to save well, first from Michael Dawson and then from a rising Bentley drive.
He was beaten shortly after the hour, only for Defoe to be ruled offside, but the tide was increasingly strong, and in the 73rd minute Leeds finally cracked. It was no great surprise that Bentley, on the right, should be the provider with a low driven cross, nor that Defoe, from close range, should provide the finishing touch.With the crowd finally quietened, the Leeds manager, Simon Grayson, turned to his bench, but the gulf in resources was obvious. Even so, only when Defoe rounded Ankergren in stoppage time could Redknapp relax. "I thought we were very good, we competed ever so well against a top, top team," said Grayson. "Now we have to try and make sure we finish the job we have started in the league. The players are disappointed now, but they should feel a lot better about themselves in the morning, they can be proud of what they have achieved so far this season."