No injury issues. Our strongest team - balance and being competitive - would seem to be the one that finished the game on Saturday. Except as said, Scotty Parker doesn't do mid weeks, so O'Hara will most likely take his spot. I know football doesn't always work as expected/hoped and with this clutch of 5 games in 10 days some rotation can become necessary. However we really should stick withe the 3-5-2 formation and when you compare players on a one for one basis it's difficult to justify changing things. So - ........................Lonergan................... ............Madl........Burn......Amorebieta.... ..Fredericks...Baird....O'Hara.......Garbutt... .........................Cairney........... ............Dembele......McCormack.... Know that's not exactly 3-5-2 but you know what I mean and Tom Cairney just has to play floating high up in the middle. To be honest, in different ways, both the front men have me squeaking in my seat at times but Slavi's not going to drop them, so there they stay. Bet Matt Smith would relish a chance to play in front of the Elland Road crowd though (more than McCormack will!).
There are two jobs least likely to earn friends - a Tax Inspector and a Football Referee. Well, the man in the middle tonight, Mr Kevin Wright has the dubious pleasure of being both .. !! Mr Wright has been around a bit but mostly in the lower Leagues, with only a smattering of Championship games and we've never seen him before. His return so far this season in his 25 games is, 78 yellow and 4 red. If Nando and Tunni both play, you can just see a P45 looming.
would love a Fulham victory. Typical Fulham, get my hopes up after the weekend and they'll let me down with a thump come 21.30!
As you were - this is it and on the bench: Lewis, Richards, Stearman, Tunnicliffe, Hyndman, Kaca and Smith
Sounds as though we were well in control for the first half an hour then lost all shape in the midfield - not least in allowing the Leed's guy get the shot away for the equaliser. Sure we can shake our heads and count the number of points we've lost to a 'worldie'. No coincidence though. Just click this video clip and see at the space he has, at Jamie O'Hara's positioning, at Cook looking up to see Lonergan way of his line before deciding to shoot: Second half we just didn't take our (many) chances and let them bully us into mistakes and panic at the other end of the pitch. None of that helped by a poor referee, who has Slavi blistering over the decision that Nando handled the ball at all, never mind deliberately. Will have to wait and see the replay I guess but, if GJ was correct, we appear to have been pulled up an inordinate number of times for debatable handballs. Fair play to the lads though and compared to the other display up North last week this was a well earned point.
From the highlights it looked like both teams had a chance to win it, the equaliser is a beauty although he has got far too much time and space. Tunnicliffe looked like he was trying to channel Messi across London with his back heel!
To be fair to the ref it took three looks at the reply for me to come to conclusion that I'm 85% sure Nanado didn't handball it, but what was his hand doing up there in the first place????
My thoughts as well Cookie and you can see why the ref called it. The clincher surely was the frantic flag waving linesman - he was smack bang in front of Nando and something convinced him.
