Battling Whites are stung at the death

Yorkshire Evening Post 7/4/12

By Phil Hay
In the end it was better than Neil Warnock expected – a day when those Leeds United supporters who laughed off his joke about staying at home found some satisfaction in ludicrous adversity.
Leeds took the long road to Reading with their squad coming apart at the seams and were backed into a corner by inexperience and recklessness, but a desperate situation found their players willing to dirty their hands.
United’s manager, Neil Warnock, reacted to his team’s defeat to Watford last week by suggesting his team lacked “something between their legs”. That something was found at the Madejski Stadium where Zac Thompson’s 13th-minute red card set the Alamo in motion. With 10 players and no end of credit, Leeds fought their way to within six minutes of a goalless draw.
Warnock would have accepted any stalemate as a creditable result before kick-off, on an afternoon when his choice of players was woefully inadequate, but it represented an immense possibility after the chaos which ensued so early in the game.
Thompson’s selection was largely the effect of Warnock’s extensive roll of absentees but the young midfielder’s only contribution was to invite his dismissal with the match in its infancy and leave United to face the music against the Championship’s second-placed team.
Creditable
They danced to Reading’s tune, as teams with 11 players regularly do at the Madejski Stadium, but a moral victory was found in their late and narrow defeat, inflicted by Adam Le Fondre’s goals on 84 and 90 minutes. A performance worth of the moniker ‘Dirty Leeds’ ran Leeds close to a point as creditable as any other accrued this season.
There were near-misses prior to Le Fondre’s tap-ins but stoic defending too; also a sense that Reading were relying on inevitability rather than their indisputable ability to bring matters to a head.
As Brian McDermott’s team persisted, Michael Brown and Danny Pugh put the boot in readily – sometimes legally, sometimes not. An impasse developed.
By the final 20 minutes, Reading were pushing their luck as Robert Snodgrass allowed a glorious chance to come and go, but Le Fondre, a late substitute, forced the issue when Jimmy Kebe’s cross found United’s defence stretched.
Warnock could not complain about tired legs or tired minds when the striker put Reading’s win beyond doubt in the last minute.
For all the hindrances bothering United’s boss – suspensions to Paul Connolly, Adam Clayton and Darren O’Dea, and an injury to Aidan White added to several others – his starting line-up retained a reasonable level of strength, albeit for 13 minutes.
The tell-tale signs of problems behind the scenes were Thompson’s appearance in the centre of midfield and the presence of Charlie Taylor on the bench. Warnock had promised to give “one or two kids a go”after United’s sorry defeat to Watford but the selection of an 18-year-old left-back among his substitutes was clearly enforced.
All in all, it led Warnock to dispense with his preferred system and set Ross McCormack and Luciano Becchio against the brick wall of Reading’s centre-backs, Kaspars Gorkss and Alex Pearce. The defenders were only part of a team whose failings could be listed on the back of a stamp. In Warnock’s eyes, Reading had none.
Their attempt to flex their muscles began immediately, with Noel Hunt rising above Paul Robinson to head Ian Harte’s free-kick over the crossbar and the striker shooting straight at Andy Lonergan after collecting a misguided clearance from Alex Bruce.
Gorkss should have scored in the eighth minute when he met Harte’s corner six yards out, nodding it wastefully into the stands from close range, and the flow of the tide seemed to be set by that early juncture. Thompson’s dismissal confirmed that it was.
Michael Brown had already escaped unpunished for a committed foul when Thompson cut through the ankle of Jobi McAnuff, far out on one touchline. Referee Darren Drysdale pulled out his red card as players crowded around him and replays did nothing to exonerate Thompson. Warnock clasped the midfielder by the shoulders as he walked from the field with his head bowed, uttering some pointed words of wisdom.
Their backs to the wall and their formation shredded, Leeds could do nothing more than hang on gamely. Warnock berated the fourth official after Drysdale tolerated McAnuff’s late foul on Brown, one wild challenge in a half littered with them, but for a while he was helpless to stem Reading’s predictable onslaught.
Harte narrowly failed to test Lonergan from long range and then clattered the inside of a post with a flighted cross from the left wing. All that with 70 minutes to play.
It would have summed up United’s week to that point had Lonergan failed to recover from a 25th-minute collision with Hunt and deprived Warnock of his goalkeeper with no recognised replacement in reserve. A spell of treatment brought Lonergan back to his feet and Leeds’ first chance came moments later as McCormack slipped into Reading’s box and pulled a volley across the face of Adam Federici’s goal.
McAnuff clipped United’s ear soon after by cutting inside an embattled Tom Lees and hooking a shot over Lonergan’s bar but the lull in the game which followed suited Leeds.
Reading lost Jem Karacan from their increasingly anonymous midfield six minutes before the break when Brown dealt with him and the ball in one crunching movement.
It was through bloody-minded aggression like his that a depleted team reached half-time with parity and their pride intact.
Federici’s first save came immediately after the restart when he dived to turn Snodgrass’ free-kick around a post but the plot for the second half was never likely to be centred around attacks by Leeds.
Jimmy Kebe’s free-kick caused a scramble in front of Lonergan and Hal Robson-Kanu mis-controlled the ball when almost clean through. Had United been given the time, they would have watched the ticking clock.
But McCormack threatened an upset when he reacted to Kebe’s slip and clipped the outside of a post with a fine effort, and Snodgrass missed the opportunity to stab Reading in the back on 72 minutes when he arrived in an empty box and cracked a shot against Federici’s arms.
Sensational it would have been but Warnock’s players could hardly have emerged with more credit, even after Le Fondre arrived at the far post on 84 minutes to nudge Robson-Kanu’s hanging header into an empty net with six minutes to play.
With 90 minutes all but up the striker struck again by meeting Roberts’ cross from close range, unmarked inside the box.
It has been one of those seasons for Leeds, and one of those weeks.