Leeds United v Bristol City: Warnock delight as Whites tough it out
Yorkshire Evening Post 21/1/13
By Phil Hay
Elland Road on Saturday had more empty seats than full. This on an afternoon when Leeds United registered a sixth successive league win at home. Not even the introduction of half-season tickets could better the stadium’s average.
Those statistics were juxtaposed as the debate raged about how the club and their manager should be judged. It may not matter to him in the slightest but Neil Warnock is patently aware that certain supporters regard Leeds as a team lacking in culture. More of that criticism was heard after their 1-0 victory over Bristol City.
“You can’t please everybody,” Warnock said, “even after six straight wins. They’d rather see you play like Real Madrid and lose. But the Championship’s a hard league and I don’t think many teams could get six home wins on the trot.”
For him, Saturday’s game was entirely about the result. United’s owner, GFH Capital, has said nothing about the security of Warnock’s position as manager – a column published by the company in the matchday programme did not mention him or the loss suffered by Leeds at Barnsley seven days earlier – but it stood to reason that a second defeat to the Championship’s bottom side in little over a week would encourage GFH Capital to start asking questions. That awkward scenario was duly avoided.
Ross McCormack’s 67th-minute header, his second goal in as many games, settled a flat match and earned Leeds another home win, while Bristol City drifted further away at the foot of the division.
This is United’s most consistent spate of results at Elland Road since a long run of victories carried them into the League One play-offs in 2009. Back then the final game of their winning sequence was watched by more than 34,000. The applause at full-time on Saturday bordered on polite. The uninitiated might have asked if United’s season was dead in the water.
For now, Saturday’s win has kept Warnock’s squad in the running, five points behind sixth place and reliant in the short term on Watford failing to stretch that gap when they take their turn at hosting Bristol City in a rearranged fixture a week tomorrow. In the meantime, Leeds will play Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup before locking horns with Cardiff City, the Championship leaders. February should re-examine Warnock’s theory that his squad have a tendency to thrive when the onus weighs more heavily on the opposition.
“The most difficult games are when you play against the likes of Bristol City,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a problem when we play Cardiff or Spurs because the crowd come to the game expecting nothing.
“When you play teams at the bottom of the table, you can see the frustration in certain things at Elland Road. It’s a difficult place for players to play and you have to stand up and be counted.”
Bristol City know the feeling. Seven points from safety after their first game under new manager Sean O’Driscoll, their defeat at Elland Road was another nail in the coffin. They had occasional chances of note – two in particular that O’Driscoll was left to rue – but Leeds blunted their attack after McCormack scored the game’s only goal.
Having gambled slightly by keeping faith with a central defensive pairing of Lee Peltier and Tom Lees – chosen over Jason Pearce and Alan Tate as they were in Birmingham last Tuesday – there was no call for Warnock to defend that decision.
Beyond his defence, there were other strands of satisfaction. Ross Barkley, United’s loanee from Everton, mixed over-elaboration with welcome positivity and McCormack’s enthusiasm was well rewarded. El-Hadji Diouf looks ever more like a steady influence who Leeds would be lost without but United took a long time to find any fluency.
Warnock admitted that his players seemed “apprehensive” in the first half and they left the field at the interval to the sound of mild booing.
The opening 45 minutes were littered with fouls and half-chances. Liam Kelly and Neil Kilkenny, the former Leeds midfielder, received bookings for blatant fouls and Barkley scuffed United’s best opportunity after Luciano Becchio obscured his line of sight as Diouf angled a cross into the box.
McCormack was fractionally short of turning a Barkley delivery into the net with a minute of injury-time ticking by but Richard Foster let Leeds off the hook when he broke into space 10 yards from goal and drove a shot directly at Paddy Kenny.
Kenny was on hand again at the start of the second half when his two-handed parry prevented Tom Lees from stabbing Foster’s cut-back into his own net.
“At the start we were apprehensive,” Warnock said, “especially one or two of the younger lads. We played a little too deep.
“With Rudy (Austin) and (Michael) Brown, I didn’t want them picking it up from the centre-halves 20 or 30 yards inside our half. I didn’t understand that. But we pushed on in the second half and played a lot more football. We got a grip and the goal was a cracking goal.”
It came, as it often does at Elland Road, amid a short and sustained flurry of pressure. Barkley worked himself into space on the right wing and dinked a cross to the far post where McCormack jumped above his marker and nodded the ball goalwards. From a couple of yards out, he could barely miss and goalkeeper Tom Heaton jumped helplessly to his right as McCormack’s header flashed beyond his left hand.
United have not struggled to protect a lead at Elland Road this season and so it proved again. O’Driscoll used three substitutions but the impact was minimal and Kenny went untested in the final 20 minutes.
“If we’d walked off the field 0-0 we’d have been jumping through hoops,” O’Driscoll said afterwards. “If someone had said the players would perform like that for me after four days, I’d have taken it.”
Warnock was a more satisfied man, admitting the week had gone better than it might after the beating at Barnsley.
“Bristol City will get some points now Sean’s gone in there,” he said, “so to come away with the points, knowing where we are in the league and that we’re trying to strengthen the squad, the glass should be half-full, not half-empty. I’m delighted.”
By Phil Hay
Elland Road on Saturday had more empty seats than full. This on an afternoon when Leeds United registered a sixth successive league win at home. Not even the introduction of half-season tickets could better the stadium’s average.
Those statistics were juxtaposed as the debate raged about how the club and their manager should be judged. It may not matter to him in the slightest but Neil Warnock is patently aware that certain supporters regard Leeds as a team lacking in culture. More of that criticism was heard after their 1-0 victory over Bristol City.
“You can’t please everybody,” Warnock said, “even after six straight wins. They’d rather see you play like Real Madrid and lose. But the Championship’s a hard league and I don’t think many teams could get six home wins on the trot.”
For him, Saturday’s game was entirely about the result. United’s owner, GFH Capital, has said nothing about the security of Warnock’s position as manager – a column published by the company in the matchday programme did not mention him or the loss suffered by Leeds at Barnsley seven days earlier – but it stood to reason that a second defeat to the Championship’s bottom side in little over a week would encourage GFH Capital to start asking questions. That awkward scenario was duly avoided.
Ross McCormack’s 67th-minute header, his second goal in as many games, settled a flat match and earned Leeds another home win, while Bristol City drifted further away at the foot of the division.
This is United’s most consistent spate of results at Elland Road since a long run of victories carried them into the League One play-offs in 2009. Back then the final game of their winning sequence was watched by more than 34,000. The applause at full-time on Saturday bordered on polite. The uninitiated might have asked if United’s season was dead in the water.
For now, Saturday’s win has kept Warnock’s squad in the running, five points behind sixth place and reliant in the short term on Watford failing to stretch that gap when they take their turn at hosting Bristol City in a rearranged fixture a week tomorrow. In the meantime, Leeds will play Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Cup before locking horns with Cardiff City, the Championship leaders. February should re-examine Warnock’s theory that his squad have a tendency to thrive when the onus weighs more heavily on the opposition.
“The most difficult games are when you play against the likes of Bristol City,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a problem when we play Cardiff or Spurs because the crowd come to the game expecting nothing.
“When you play teams at the bottom of the table, you can see the frustration in certain things at Elland Road. It’s a difficult place for players to play and you have to stand up and be counted.”
Bristol City know the feeling. Seven points from safety after their first game under new manager Sean O’Driscoll, their defeat at Elland Road was another nail in the coffin. They had occasional chances of note – two in particular that O’Driscoll was left to rue – but Leeds blunted their attack after McCormack scored the game’s only goal.
Having gambled slightly by keeping faith with a central defensive pairing of Lee Peltier and Tom Lees – chosen over Jason Pearce and Alan Tate as they were in Birmingham last Tuesday – there was no call for Warnock to defend that decision.
Beyond his defence, there were other strands of satisfaction. Ross Barkley, United’s loanee from Everton, mixed over-elaboration with welcome positivity and McCormack’s enthusiasm was well rewarded. El-Hadji Diouf looks ever more like a steady influence who Leeds would be lost without but United took a long time to find any fluency.
Warnock admitted that his players seemed “apprehensive” in the first half and they left the field at the interval to the sound of mild booing.
The opening 45 minutes were littered with fouls and half-chances. Liam Kelly and Neil Kilkenny, the former Leeds midfielder, received bookings for blatant fouls and Barkley scuffed United’s best opportunity after Luciano Becchio obscured his line of sight as Diouf angled a cross into the box.
McCormack was fractionally short of turning a Barkley delivery into the net with a minute of injury-time ticking by but Richard Foster let Leeds off the hook when he broke into space 10 yards from goal and drove a shot directly at Paddy Kenny.
Kenny was on hand again at the start of the second half when his two-handed parry prevented Tom Lees from stabbing Foster’s cut-back into his own net.
“At the start we were apprehensive,” Warnock said, “especially one or two of the younger lads. We played a little too deep.
“With Rudy (Austin) and (Michael) Brown, I didn’t want them picking it up from the centre-halves 20 or 30 yards inside our half. I didn’t understand that. But we pushed on in the second half and played a lot more football. We got a grip and the goal was a cracking goal.”
It came, as it often does at Elland Road, amid a short and sustained flurry of pressure. Barkley worked himself into space on the right wing and dinked a cross to the far post where McCormack jumped above his marker and nodded the ball goalwards. From a couple of yards out, he could barely miss and goalkeeper Tom Heaton jumped helplessly to his right as McCormack’s header flashed beyond his left hand.
United have not struggled to protect a lead at Elland Road this season and so it proved again. O’Driscoll used three substitutions but the impact was minimal and Kenny went untested in the final 20 minutes.
“If we’d walked off the field 0-0 we’d have been jumping through hoops,” O’Driscoll said afterwards. “If someone had said the players would perform like that for me after four days, I’d have taken it.”
Warnock was a more satisfied man, admitting the week had gone better than it might after the beating at Barnsley.
“Bristol City will get some points now Sean’s gone in there,” he said, “so to come away with the points, knowing where we are in the league and that we’re trying to strengthen the squad, the glass should be half-full, not half-empty. I’m delighted.”