Derby County v Leeds United: Whites winning streak ends abruptly
Yorkshire Evening Post 10/12/12
By Phil Hay
When Derby County wiped the floor of Elland Road with Leeds United last season, Neil Warnock gave Nigel Clough a quick piece of advice.
“Enjoy this,” Warnock told him, “because you’ll never see another Leeds United team like this.” Clough might well have agreed and as Saturday’s meeting between the clubs drew near, the Derby manager was complaining about County’s bad luck in colliding with a side in form.
If Clough felt genuinely worried, he needn’t have done. Leeds avoided a repeat of April’s sorry mis-match but Derby cleaned up regardless at Pride Park with a goal in the first half from Conor Sammon and two in the second from Jake Buxton and Ben Davies. Defeats of an unflattering nature were United’s staple diet last season and began to creep in again a month ago but their capitulation on Saturday came without warning.
Leeds’ record against Derby is beyond awful – eight defeats in a row and counting – but they have rarely been in better fettle under Warnock than they were last week. Clough spoke beforehand of United reaching the play-offs but he found his squad ahead of theirs in the Championship table after Warnock’s players hit the wall. The Leeds boss had no way of arguing with a 3-1 loss.
Anonymous in the first half and outplayed for all but a short spell of the second, United were asking for it. Their 45th-minute goal, scored by Paul Green against the club he left in May and against the run of play, came from their only chance before half-time, and the anxiety it created around Pride Park was allowed to fade an hour into the game.
For the period in between, Derby’s nerve threatened to fail them but Buxton and Davies came up with goals at the moments when Clough needed them. Davies’ deft shot three minutes into injury-time left County to coast to the end of a match which was finely balanced after Buxton’s 66th-minute strike. They deserved to feel comfortable at the final whistle.
Warnock acknowledged the cost of United’s passive approach to the first half but saw a wasted opportunity in the second after Green’s reply to Sammon’s opening goal briefly turned the tide. He was angry too with referee Scott Mathieson for deciding that a wild collision between Jeff Hendrick and Ryan Hall – a collision for which Hendrick was largely responsible – merited only a yellow card.
Their coming-together occurred as they slid to attack a loose ball inside United’s half. Neither player made contact and Hendrick’s right leg cracked Hall beneath the chin without causing any lasting damage. Hall jumped to his feet and Mathieson pulled out a yellow card, perhaps swayed by the winger’s honest reaction.
With 35 minutes played, a dismissal would have turned the match on its head. In the absence of a red card, Leeds were unable to alter the game themselves. Their midfield was overrun by Hendrick and the imaginative Will Hughes, a 17-year-old whose name and skill seems likely to fill column inches for many seasons to come. It was his quick break from the centre circle – prompted by Michael Tonge’s foul on Theo Robinson – which presented Sammon with the opening goal on 15 minutes.
Robinson stabbed a quick free-kick into the path of Hughes who ran at Warnock’s defence and slipped a pass to Sammon inside the box. The striker turned Lee Peltier and calmly wrong-footed Paddy Kenny who committed himself with an early dive.
Derby’s intensity was in contrast to United’s directionless play. Chances were few but Kenny denied Theo Robinson by parrying a shot at the striker feet and Alan Tate almost turned Hughes’ cross into his own net, moments before the break.
“Derby’s home record is as good as most in the league so the way they played didn’t surprise me,” Warnock said. “What surprised me was that so few of our forward players contributed in the first half.
“That was nothing to do with Derby’s ability. It was down to our non-ability. Certain players didn’t perform and I felt sorry for the lads behind them, the backline and the midfield. Other than Luciano Becchio, we invited pressure.”
Warnock was preparing for a choice interval address when Green, the ex-Derby midfielder, plucked an equaliser out of the air in the last minute of the half. He anticipated a knockdown from Becchio as Peltier thumped a high ball into Derby’s box and was unimpeded as he stabbed the ball past goalkeeper Adam Legzdins.
Green was abused by sections of Derby’s crowd over his decision to leave the club for Elland Road in the summer but his reaction to the goal was muted, consisting of nothing more than a wide smile and a brief glance towards the stands.
At the end of a one-sided half, Clough was more inclined to look to the sky.
“We were very poor to begin with,” Warnock admitted.
“They were physical and they got at us but we withstood that.
“I didn’t think they could improve whereas I thought we’d be 100 per cent better in the second half and we were. We started well but the second goal was always going to be the winner. We couldn’t quite manage to get it.”
There were isolated moments of promise as Derby wobbled – Ross McCormack driving the ball straight at Legzdins and Michael Jacobs knocking a cross from Hall off the goalline – but County soon found their feet. Kenny beat away a rising shot from Hughes after the teenager danced around several players and Buxton was on hand to turn Richard Keogh’s drive into the net after Becchio nodded a dipping ball from under his own crossbar into the heart of the penalty area.
“Becks headed the ball back into play when he should have headed it out,” Warnock said. “It was a forward in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I can’t fault him. He carried us on his own in the first half.”
A steady drip of substitutions followed as Luke Varney, El-Hadji Diouf and Aidan White entered the fray. Legzdins parried a goalbound volley from Norris but was utterly helpless in the 77th minute when Tom Lees met Diouf’s cross with header which hit the inside of the post and fell kindly to Keogh, who hacked it clear.
United continued to throw players forward, leaving gaps behind them, and when Peltier let the ball escape him deep into injury-time, Paul Coutts broke away and laid it off to substitute Davies who beat Kenny in some style from 18 yards.
Clough, unsurprisingly, knew his history. “These aren’t derbies but the rivalry’s there and they’re usually tight games,” he said.
“To get eight straight victories over Leeds is quite incredible.”
By Phil Hay
When Derby County wiped the floor of Elland Road with Leeds United last season, Neil Warnock gave Nigel Clough a quick piece of advice.
“Enjoy this,” Warnock told him, “because you’ll never see another Leeds United team like this.” Clough might well have agreed and as Saturday’s meeting between the clubs drew near, the Derby manager was complaining about County’s bad luck in colliding with a side in form.
If Clough felt genuinely worried, he needn’t have done. Leeds avoided a repeat of April’s sorry mis-match but Derby cleaned up regardless at Pride Park with a goal in the first half from Conor Sammon and two in the second from Jake Buxton and Ben Davies. Defeats of an unflattering nature were United’s staple diet last season and began to creep in again a month ago but their capitulation on Saturday came without warning.
Leeds’ record against Derby is beyond awful – eight defeats in a row and counting – but they have rarely been in better fettle under Warnock than they were last week. Clough spoke beforehand of United reaching the play-offs but he found his squad ahead of theirs in the Championship table after Warnock’s players hit the wall. The Leeds boss had no way of arguing with a 3-1 loss.
Anonymous in the first half and outplayed for all but a short spell of the second, United were asking for it. Their 45th-minute goal, scored by Paul Green against the club he left in May and against the run of play, came from their only chance before half-time, and the anxiety it created around Pride Park was allowed to fade an hour into the game.
For the period in between, Derby’s nerve threatened to fail them but Buxton and Davies came up with goals at the moments when Clough needed them. Davies’ deft shot three minutes into injury-time left County to coast to the end of a match which was finely balanced after Buxton’s 66th-minute strike. They deserved to feel comfortable at the final whistle.
Warnock acknowledged the cost of United’s passive approach to the first half but saw a wasted opportunity in the second after Green’s reply to Sammon’s opening goal briefly turned the tide. He was angry too with referee Scott Mathieson for deciding that a wild collision between Jeff Hendrick and Ryan Hall – a collision for which Hendrick was largely responsible – merited only a yellow card.
Their coming-together occurred as they slid to attack a loose ball inside United’s half. Neither player made contact and Hendrick’s right leg cracked Hall beneath the chin without causing any lasting damage. Hall jumped to his feet and Mathieson pulled out a yellow card, perhaps swayed by the winger’s honest reaction.
With 35 minutes played, a dismissal would have turned the match on its head. In the absence of a red card, Leeds were unable to alter the game themselves. Their midfield was overrun by Hendrick and the imaginative Will Hughes, a 17-year-old whose name and skill seems likely to fill column inches for many seasons to come. It was his quick break from the centre circle – prompted by Michael Tonge’s foul on Theo Robinson – which presented Sammon with the opening goal on 15 minutes.
Robinson stabbed a quick free-kick into the path of Hughes who ran at Warnock’s defence and slipped a pass to Sammon inside the box. The striker turned Lee Peltier and calmly wrong-footed Paddy Kenny who committed himself with an early dive.
Derby’s intensity was in contrast to United’s directionless play. Chances were few but Kenny denied Theo Robinson by parrying a shot at the striker feet and Alan Tate almost turned Hughes’ cross into his own net, moments before the break.
“Derby’s home record is as good as most in the league so the way they played didn’t surprise me,” Warnock said. “What surprised me was that so few of our forward players contributed in the first half.
“That was nothing to do with Derby’s ability. It was down to our non-ability. Certain players didn’t perform and I felt sorry for the lads behind them, the backline and the midfield. Other than Luciano Becchio, we invited pressure.”
Warnock was preparing for a choice interval address when Green, the ex-Derby midfielder, plucked an equaliser out of the air in the last minute of the half. He anticipated a knockdown from Becchio as Peltier thumped a high ball into Derby’s box and was unimpeded as he stabbed the ball past goalkeeper Adam Legzdins.
Green was abused by sections of Derby’s crowd over his decision to leave the club for Elland Road in the summer but his reaction to the goal was muted, consisting of nothing more than a wide smile and a brief glance towards the stands.
At the end of a one-sided half, Clough was more inclined to look to the sky.
“We were very poor to begin with,” Warnock admitted.
“They were physical and they got at us but we withstood that.
“I didn’t think they could improve whereas I thought we’d be 100 per cent better in the second half and we were. We started well but the second goal was always going to be the winner. We couldn’t quite manage to get it.”
There were isolated moments of promise as Derby wobbled – Ross McCormack driving the ball straight at Legzdins and Michael Jacobs knocking a cross from Hall off the goalline – but County soon found their feet. Kenny beat away a rising shot from Hughes after the teenager danced around several players and Buxton was on hand to turn Richard Keogh’s drive into the net after Becchio nodded a dipping ball from under his own crossbar into the heart of the penalty area.
“Becks headed the ball back into play when he should have headed it out,” Warnock said. “It was a forward in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I can’t fault him. He carried us on his own in the first half.”
A steady drip of substitutions followed as Luke Varney, El-Hadji Diouf and Aidan White entered the fray. Legzdins parried a goalbound volley from Norris but was utterly helpless in the 77th minute when Tom Lees met Diouf’s cross with header which hit the inside of the post and fell kindly to Keogh, who hacked it clear.
United continued to throw players forward, leaving gaps behind them, and when Peltier let the ball escape him deep into injury-time, Paul Coutts broke away and laid it off to substitute Davies who beat Kenny in some style from 18 yards.
Clough, unsurprisingly, knew his history. “These aren’t derbies but the rivalry’s there and they’re usually tight games,” he said.
“To get eight straight victories over Leeds is quite incredible.”