Leeds United 1 Hull City 0

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Goodness me that was hard to watch! The stats from this game were remarkably similar to those from the Norwich game last week with the exception that Hull managed three times the attempts on goal that we did this time. Other than that, Hull bossed the possession, and, just as Norwich did last week, got four shots on target to our three. At the end of the day though we had Pablo Hernandez!

This little run we are in at the moment seems to me remarkably like the one we put together at the start of the season; against poor sides we are showing just enough flair to carve out a few decent chances while at the other end we are proving difficult to break down. Without Samu Saiz today we were perhaps not as fluent as we sometimes were back in August and created even fewer chances than normal, but once again we were resolute at the back and, as with most of the sides in the bottom seven of the Championship, Hull are woefully short of a, well, a Pablo Hernandez! Leeds have now beaten eight of the bottom nine sides in the Championship; the odd one out being those pesky folk from Millwall who we always lose to!

There is no doubt that we are a better side than those 8 but the real test for our promotion ambitions will come once we get stuck into the reverse fixtures against the top 9 sides, of which we’ve only managed to beat two – Bristol City and Boro. I feel we will have to do better than that next time round as well as continuing to beat the lesser sides such as Burton and Birmingham that come up next.

But for now we can only marvel at a sublime piece of invention from Pablo Hernandez, every bit as beautiful as many a creation from Pablo Picasso! A back pass onto the keeper’s kicking foot looked to be no problem until McGregor scuffed his clearance straight to the ever alert Pablo. A few short strides towards goal and a delightful toe end lob over the keeper did the rest! If ever we have to face a game with neither Pablo nor Samu…well, then we might be in real trouble!

For now we hope we can continue to grind out these vital results against the Brewers and the Blues and hope somehow along the way our fluency returns. Every now and then we do look very weak up front but with those two Spanish magicians around and Pontus heading bricks at the back we usually get by!

Happy Christmas everybody!