Leeds Utd        2 (Ayling 7, Kristensen 79)                                             

Newcastle U    2 (Wilson 31 pen, 69 pen)                                              

 

13th May 2023, Premier League.

35,955.

 

Part of me says Leeds absolutely deserve to go down the way we continually shoot ourselves in the foot! That game was there to be won; a goal up, a penalty awarded that should have seen us two to the good, and Newcastle having to open up and come at us. And we fluffed our lines.

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Whoever is responsible for Patrick Bamford taking that penalty wants shooting – why, oh why would you give a vital penalty kick to a player so out of confidence and out of luck recently? We did it once before this season against Arsenal with the same result! Why do we have to keep making the same mistakes? Why do we never learn the lessons we are given?

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That’s the rant over but, in our situation surely we should have all these controllable things under control? I know Rodrigo might have missed the penalty too, but, if you were to choose between your top scorer, a man who finished sublimely only last week, a man totally bereft of form and confidence and who has more often than not missed his big chances rather than take them, or your top scorer who scored a great goal the week before, how long would that decision take?

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Giving two penalties away in the manner we did also didn’t help matters but I believe, as Big Sam also mentioned after the game that, had we scored that penalty we’d have cruised to a win with Newcastle then having to come at us and with our abilities on the break. We’ll never know of course.

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Where has that point left us? Well, who knows. On a positive note the spirit we’ve seen most of the season is still there and we’ve won a point against a side that has been fairly dominant since the start of April scoring goals for fun and almost as quickly as we’ve been conceding them. At the end of the day Toon only scored from two penalty kicks so surely that is a sign that the defensive focus from Allardyce is working to a degree. As he intimated after the game, I reckon the focus this coming week will be not going to ground in the area!

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All is still not lost, but if we keep looking a gift horse in the mouth, then that horse will surely soon have bolted.