16 February, 2008

Dirty Leeds and stopping the rot

I admit that I am not well-qualified to comment on the Reds' level of performance this season, purely because I haven't been to that many games. I went to the poor season-opener against Bournemouth, the decent-for-about-60-minutes daylight robbery against Leeds at home, and the frankly dire and uninspiring dirge of Walsall away.

However, even a deaf, dumb and blind person would realise that something frankly stinks about the level of performance and results away from home. I was actually quietly confident that a big away match at Elland Road would cause the players and fans to raise their game sufficiently to break the hoodoo.

I saw the highlights on Stan Collymore's "Central Soccer Night", and the fact we didn't win was down to one thing - the law of averages. The referee and linesmen denied Leeds penalties for handballs (both ball-to-hand in my opinion, but if it happened at the City Ground, you know that we would all be shouting for a pen), but then caved in at the end; if you had 27 000 people yelling at you for 90 minutes, I suppose you might feel the pressure too.

Let's try and look at the positives - when I saw the personnel on duty, I thought that CC had gone too far with his "tactical genius". However, many people who were actually there said that the 5-3-2 worked quite well, and it seems as though the experience of our much-maligned skipper helped to keep Leeds at bay. The bottom line is that away from home, 4-4-2 did not work, the diamond has not worked, 4-3-3 has not worked. So give CC some credit for trying something different to stop the rot.

I think that Jules is now staking a claim for player of the season - as far as I can tell, he is the most improved player. His clearance off the line at Elland Road was frankly incredible, the kind that I used to dream about making as a young defender. I also thought that his goals in the last couple of matches have been great, strong, powerful headers. Nice one.

But why did Radio 5 and the commentator on ITV both think that fatty Grant had scored?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

C'mon Forest! Best regards from Paris, France!

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