Leeds United 0 Cardiff City 4
You look at the only statistic that matters, the full time result, and think that Cardiff dominated Leeds at Elland Road this evening. And you’d be wrong. The Bluebirds victory was one earned through a combination of good fortune, poor United defending and City playing impressive football on the break. The 4-0 away win for Dave Jones’s side put them level on points with Championship pacesetters QPR, but that score line somewhat flattered them.
The twenty-second minute opener was an aberration, created out of nothing more than a long ball up the field not dealt with by Alex Bruce, his father watching from the stands. Once he let it bounce the centre half had played returning keeper Kasper Schmeichel into all sorts of trouble and the in-form Jay Bothroyd simply had to tap in amongst the chaos in the Leeds backline. Cardiff’s luck did not stop there however. Ten minutes later the Bluebirds number nine could well have been dismissed for an atrocious challenge to Luciano Becchio, had the referee’s view not been obscured by another Leeds player. Full credit must go to the Lilywhites target man for his professionalism as he could have quite easily stayed down rolling around on the floor, instead he chose to get back to his feet and the incident remains at the time of writing unpunished.
Within seven minutes of the restart the Bluebirds went two up through Michael Chopra but he was offside when the ball was played to him, another thing which escaped the notice of the officials. Schmeichel got a hand to his shot and should probably feel he could’ve done better, but it was an attempted save he would not have needed to make were it not for this further slice of luck. No excuses can be made about Bothroyd’s second goal four minutes later. Neill Collins should know better than to get sucked to the ball leaving such a dangerous striker unmarked. Lee Naylor completed the scoring with a twenty-five yarder that caught Schmeichel out, but no team should ever stand off an opposing player on the edge of the box, even if it was only his thirteenth ever league goal, averaging one strike a season for every year of the former Wolves and Celtic full back’s career.
Craig Bellamy, playing from the left, as you would expect of a Premier League class footballer only plying his trade at a lower level because Manchester City were not prepared to loan him to top flight rivals, was a real handful. He created all sorts of problems for Paul Connolly and the Leeds right back could not keep up with him. Leeds however had their own threat from that flank in Bradley Johnson who has performed both well and consistently this season so far. A shame then that his teammates did not gamble to get on the end of some inviting balls he whipped into the box. Cardiff did well to smother Davide Somma out of the game and keeping him quite is a real advert for doing your homework. With their top scorer marked out of the game the Lilywhites never really stretched young Tom Heaton in the Bluebirds goal. All the saves he made were routine.
Simon Grayson needs a response from his side after this embarrassing and unlucky display. The absence of Richard Naylor stuck out like a saw thumb and the sooner he and long-term injury casualty Patrick Kisnorbo can get back to first team action the better for Leeds’ shaky defence. It did not help matters tonight that there was also no out and out striker on the bench to replace Somma and/or Becchio. The Honduran Ramon Nunez looked to have something about him when he came off the bench. Despite the result there are positives for Lilywhites fans to take from the game. As for Cardiff they must win promotion at the third time of asking else there can be no argument that Dave Jones has failed. The big wages and unpaid stadium bills without promotion cannot go on forever.
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