Leeds United 0, Fulham 1

14 Dec 2014 02:59 pm, by YorkshireSquare

Leeds United 0
Fulham 1 (Rodallega 60)

After last week’s embarrassing four one defeat to Ipswich at Portman Road the same eleven men lined up at Elland Road on Saturday to take on Fulham. The Leeds fans will have been hoping for a good response from the Leeds players but lining up for the opposition was former talisman Ross McCormack who will have been keen to show Leeds what they are missing.

As with last week Leeds started brightly but after 20 minutes but they soon faded and the same tired display of sloppy passing emerged as they failed to make the early pressure tell. Both Mowatt and Adryan had good chances to give Leeds the lead but in a game where one goal was always going to win the points it was Fulham who grabbed the winner through Hugo Rodallega on the hour mark.

Leeds boss Neil Redfearn said after the game "I'm disappointed with the result and for the first time today, at home, we lacked that conviction and that devil. I thought our passing was a little bit tatty and we left ourselves open on the counter-attack." Leeds now drop to 19th in the Championship table and perilously close to the relegation places. Here are the views of some of our members;


The views of 1964white;

Well neither team deserve to win yesterday but Fulham were there for the taking had we applied ourselves. We started brightly with some slick passing & neat moves in the first 20 minutes then all of a sudden we seem to lose our way as the game developed into a scrappy affair.

Mowatt's header on the half hour mark looked destined for the top corner only for the old man in the baggy jogging bottoms pull off a superb save. After that our fans endured for all the hard endeavour poor passing, poor crossing, poor final ball, panicky defending, switching off as we did with the goal as we allowed the Cottagers to ghost into our box & more or less walk the ball into the net with a tap in. Adryan should have scored in the second half with a header but he bottled as he saw baggy trousers flapping towards him.After saying that why did Redfern sub him with the ineffective Chris Dawson god only knows.

Sharp on for the inept Doukara gave us more punch upfront without creating too much. From the 20 minute mark i always thought one goal would decide the game so when Fulham scored i sensed we were in for a non-event, sadly i was correct.


The views of gessa;

After the first 10 minutes I honestly thought it was going to be our day, we were playing well without creating chances but thought they would come. Then the familiar started to happen, too much flamboyancy, too many stray passes, Fulham began to get into the game. Both ends of the ground were in fine voice for the first 15 minutes but that started to wain along with the play.

Again Doukara was totally ineffective, he gave nothing. I couldn't believe it when he came out for the second half, when he was eventually replaced by Sharp, the team did pick up slightly, Sharp showed more in 5 minutes than Doukara did in the last 2 and a half hours he's played. Adryan had the worst game I’ve seen him have, not only did he bottle the header but also a couple of midfield challenges, no surprise to see him go off. Antenucci also had the worst game I've witnessed him have, some of it probably down to having to try and do the work of 2 strikers for the first hour, but mainly he couldn't hold the ball and his touches just didn't come off. Also Bianchi was poor especially in the first half.

The rest of the team didn't play badly but did nothing to excite or anything other than the call of duty. Myself and the fella next to me were saying at half time this is looking like a first goal the winner type of game, we were just hoping it was going to be us.

Two very evenly matched teams that play similar styles but I thought the main difference was their back 4 were better drilled than ours, they did really only limit us to mainly half chances A poor result. An experienced quality midfielder is a must, these lads aren't bad players but they are too inexperienced they only have a plan A.


Leeds United Line-up:
Silvestri, Byram, Cooper, Pearce, Warnock (Berardi 89), Cook, Bianchi, Mowatt, Adryan (Dawson 76), Antenucci, Doukara (Sharp 60)
Unused Subs: S Taylor, Del Fabro, Tonge, Sloth

Fulham Line-up:
Kiraly, Grimmer, Bodurov, Hutchinson, Stafylidis, Christensen, Fofana (Zverotic 84), Hyndman, Ruiz, Rodallega (Woodrow 81), McCormack
Unused Subs: Rodak, Burn, Kavanagh, Williams, Roberts

Attendance: 27,264