Guardian 15/8/10
Lloyd Sam strikes again to earn Leeds a point against Nottingham Forest
Nottingham Forest 1 Leeds United 1
John Ashdown at the City Ground
A game that began with Nottingham Forest on fire and in the end, if you take Billy Davies's
version of events, saw more stamps than Phileas Fogg's passport leaves both sides searching for their first win of the Championship season, but offers both reason for optimism.
The home side, briefly, were ominously good, but Leeds United clung on and turned the tide. If it had not been for the late fracas, both managers might have gone home reasonably satisfied.
Instead there was frustration. Davies has already pleaded for patience more than once this season, pointing out that it will be "nine or 10 games before we settle down as a squad" and that his side "need to shake up the pecking order by bringing players in". This Jekyll and Hyde performance gave weight to those claims. For 30 minutes they were vibrant, slick, a constant threat – "If it was a boxing match, it would have been stopped," Davies said. For much of the remaining 60 they struggled to string two passes together.
The Forest manager's watchword, though, was "naivety", both in his team's failure to cope with Leeds' "long back-to-front" style of play and in the 18-man melee 10 minutes from time that should have resulted in a red card for the right-back Chris Gunter, who appeared to stamp on Sanchez Watt as the two jostled ahead of a throw-in. Davies, though, felt his player had been provoked.
"If you look at the video and you'll see Gunter is stamped on and I think he's reacted very naively," Davies said. "It's clear that he reacted very poorly and he should not have got involved in what he got involved with.
"Look at the one on Gunter, look at the one that started it. There was two or three before that on [the Forest goalkeeper Lee] Camp. Buy, hey, welcome to professional football. That's what they've got to learn. There comes a point in the game when you bide your time, and you deal with what you have to deal with. But what you don't do is what we've got in the dressing room at the moment, you don't react stupidly. You learn through experience."
Davies's Leeds counterpart, Simon Grayson, unsurprisingly, disagreed with the decision to punish both players with nothing more than yellow cards. "Gunter's a lucky boy," he said. "How they've come to the conclusion of two yellow cards – Sanchez hasn't deliberately stood on his foot and Gunter has deliberately stood on it."
The ruckus added an edge to the final 10 minutes, but Forest's incisiveness had long since deserted them. Davies has been his usual outspoken self in the past week, grumbling about the trouble of the transfer window ("We have players in our dressing room who might not be here soon") and the scourge of rising player wages ("At our club and everywhere else, there are players who have had too much, too early"), but the manager could have found little to gripe about with his team's opening here.
It took only nine minutes for the home side to open the scoring, and by that stage Kasper Schmeichel had already saved well from Paul Anderson and a penalty shout had been turned down after Chris Cohen tumbled under a challenge from Federico Bessone. Dexter Blackstock gave Forest material reward for their dominant start, flicking Gunter's cross home.
Five minutes later, with Forest still rampant, gorgeous interplay between Blackstock and Robert Earnshaw put the latter clean through, but his shot pinged off the post. Indeed it was midway through the first half before Leeds had their first chance, and it was not one of their own making.
Gunter's pass skewed at right angles to its intended trajectory, Watt fed Luciano Becchio but the opportunity was smothered by Camp.
Yet Forest faded, Leeds switched to 4-4-2 and another defensive error gave the visitors an unlikely equaliser nine minutes before half-time. Wes Morgan's shocking pass out of defence was intercepted and the ball was worked wide. From Bradley Johnson's cross the 5ft 8in Lloyd Sam was allowed to run across his marker and glance a clever header beyond the goalkeeper.
With the wind already sapping from Forest's sails, the goal seem to becalm them completely. The Yorkshire side dominated the second half with the Arsenal loanee Watt, in particular, a bungler turned marauder, but they could find no way through.
"It's vital," Grayson said of the result. "If we had lost the first two games people might have got a bit downhearted, and looking for that next point or the first win, but the result can be very encouraging for us."
Lloyd Sam strikes again to earn Leeds a point against Nottingham Forest
Nottingham Forest 1 Leeds United 1
John Ashdown at the City Ground
A game that began with Nottingham Forest on fire and in the end, if you take Billy Davies's
version of events, saw more stamps than Phileas Fogg's passport leaves both sides searching for their first win of the Championship season, but offers both reason for optimism.The home side, briefly, were ominously good, but Leeds United clung on and turned the tide. If it had not been for the late fracas, both managers might have gone home reasonably satisfied.
Instead there was frustration. Davies has already pleaded for patience more than once this season, pointing out that it will be "nine or 10 games before we settle down as a squad" and that his side "need to shake up the pecking order by bringing players in". This Jekyll and Hyde performance gave weight to those claims. For 30 minutes they were vibrant, slick, a constant threat – "If it was a boxing match, it would have been stopped," Davies said. For much of the remaining 60 they struggled to string two passes together.
The Forest manager's watchword, though, was "naivety", both in his team's failure to cope with Leeds' "long back-to-front" style of play and in the 18-man melee 10 minutes from time that should have resulted in a red card for the right-back Chris Gunter, who appeared to stamp on Sanchez Watt as the two jostled ahead of a throw-in. Davies, though, felt his player had been provoked.
"If you look at the video and you'll see Gunter is stamped on and I think he's reacted very naively," Davies said. "It's clear that he reacted very poorly and he should not have got involved in what he got involved with.
"Look at the one on Gunter, look at the one that started it. There was two or three before that on [the Forest goalkeeper Lee] Camp. Buy, hey, welcome to professional football. That's what they've got to learn. There comes a point in the game when you bide your time, and you deal with what you have to deal with. But what you don't do is what we've got in the dressing room at the moment, you don't react stupidly. You learn through experience."
Davies's Leeds counterpart, Simon Grayson, unsurprisingly, disagreed with the decision to punish both players with nothing more than yellow cards. "Gunter's a lucky boy," he said. "How they've come to the conclusion of two yellow cards – Sanchez hasn't deliberately stood on his foot and Gunter has deliberately stood on it."
The ruckus added an edge to the final 10 minutes, but Forest's incisiveness had long since deserted them. Davies has been his usual outspoken self in the past week, grumbling about the trouble of the transfer window ("We have players in our dressing room who might not be here soon") and the scourge of rising player wages ("At our club and everywhere else, there are players who have had too much, too early"), but the manager could have found little to gripe about with his team's opening here.
It took only nine minutes for the home side to open the scoring, and by that stage Kasper Schmeichel had already saved well from Paul Anderson and a penalty shout had been turned down after Chris Cohen tumbled under a challenge from Federico Bessone. Dexter Blackstock gave Forest material reward for their dominant start, flicking Gunter's cross home.
Five minutes later, with Forest still rampant, gorgeous interplay between Blackstock and Robert Earnshaw put the latter clean through, but his shot pinged off the post. Indeed it was midway through the first half before Leeds had their first chance, and it was not one of their own making.
Gunter's pass skewed at right angles to its intended trajectory, Watt fed Luciano Becchio but the opportunity was smothered by Camp.
Yet Forest faded, Leeds switched to 4-4-2 and another defensive error gave the visitors an unlikely equaliser nine minutes before half-time. Wes Morgan's shocking pass out of defence was intercepted and the ball was worked wide. From Bradley Johnson's cross the 5ft 8in Lloyd Sam was allowed to run across his marker and glance a clever header beyond the goalkeeper.
With the wind already sapping from Forest's sails, the goal seem to becalm them completely. The Yorkshire side dominated the second half with the Arsenal loanee Watt, in particular, a bungler turned marauder, but they could find no way through.
"It's vital," Grayson said of the result. "If we had lost the first two games people might have got a bit downhearted, and looking for that next point or the first win, but the result can be very encouraging for us."