Leeds take a point from bore draw at Blackburn
Tim Whelan
Our goalless draw with Blackburn Rovers wasn’t the most enthralling of encounters, with Leeds dominating the possession but lacking the cutting edge we needed to take advantage.
Before the kick-off this seemed to be shaping up to be a great day out, with large numbers of Leeds fans in town and the police taking a relaxed attitude as we took over the ‘Postal Order’ Wetherspoons and made great noise. And inside Ewood Park the big screen showed the goals from our immensely enjoyable 2-1 victory here in 2004, which remains to this day our last away win in the Premier League.
But then the match began. Neil Warnock opted to start with the same eleven players who began the victory over Blackpool in midweek, and at seemed to be working as we enjoyed a lot of possession right from the start. But the trouble was that Blackburn were content to drop very deep for a home team and we had to break them down, and we spent much of the time passing the ball round outside the area, looking for an opening that never came.
The result of all this was that the game developed into a dour struggle with the two sides putting plenty of effort into the game but very few decent chances being created. The best two chances of the first half came when Lees forced Kean into a good save from a corner, while Kenny was alert at the other end to deny Kazim-Richards when Blackburn finally did venture forward.
It goes without saying that the 3,500 Leeds fans were making most of the noise, while the crowd was looking a bit sparse in most of the home stand. The only Blackburn fans making any noise was a small group down in the corner nearest to our stand, and a few of those were teenage girls.
The second half was a little bit more eventful, and it began with a great chance when McCormack was put through on the left hand side of the box, but with the ball on his weaker foot he could only put it into the side netting. But on the hour we presented Blackburn with an excellent chance of their own.
A Blackburn fan at work had warned me that although they might bore us to death, but if we gave the prolific Jordan Rhodes an opportunity he was likely to punish us. And so it nearly came to pass, as Peltier slipped and gave the ball away in the centre and it was played out to Rhodes down the right the Rovers talisman tried a shot that curled in towards the bottom corner, but thankfully ended up in the side netting.
Leeds kept pressing with Varney working hard down the right, and he was unlucky to have one shot saved and another blocked. But we could have done with some fresh legs to try and get a breakthrough in the closing stages, but Warnock opted not to use any substitutes. Morison was starting to struggle a bit and still looking a bit short of fitness, so maybe Diouf could have had a brief cameo to give us the bit of invention we needed.
Instead we had a bit of defending to do as Blackburn finally woke up with time running out, and it would have been cruel if we’d lost to a late goal after dominating the possession for much of the game. Thankfully we didn’t, with Kenny making a good save from Rhodes and the defence rallying round to block several other Rovers attacks.
This result probably isn’t much good to either side, with both needing three points to close the gap on the top six from their mid-table positions. Earlier in the season we might have been happy with a draw in this fixture, but we’re starting to run out of games, and our chances of making the play-offs are starting to look more and more remote.