Leeds United 0 Nottingham Forest 0

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This was a game that Leeds ought to have won; we had more than enough chances to do so but our finishing let us down and, as we know only too well, missed chances are costly. Kemar Roofe in particular will be ruing the opportunities he had, including the one in the second half when Samu Saiz put it on a golden platter for him but Roofe never looked composed as he rifled his shot against the top of the bar. It was poor reward for one of the best pieces of individual skill we have seen from any Leeds play this season as Saiz appeared to slalom his way through half the population of Nottingham!

Leeds amassed 19 attempts on goal – way more than we usually do- and yet we failed to score for a second consecutive game and that perhaps more than anything screams that we really could do with a truly potent marksman in this January transfer window. Without such a proven goal scorer, games such as this may continue to prove difficult to win and if we don’t win games such as this, games against the poorest sides in the Championship, then the target of the play-offs may prove elusive as we cannot expect to regularly gather maximum points from the better sides in the table. The first half of this season has already proved that.

The start to the second half of the season has not been great – dropping 5 points in two games compared with the reverse fixtures against Birmingham and Forest. We have to find a way to ensure that we don’t drop any more against Ipswich, Millwall and Hull before we embark on that “month of death” run of games against Cardiff, Sheffield United, Bristol, Derby, Brentford, Boro and Wolves.  Five of those sides beat us the first time round of course and it’s hard to believe we can win the reverse fixtures without some serious additional fire-power in the transfer window.  I still believe we are better than half the teams in the table and probably as good as another six but to be in the top half dozen come May we have to get some points off the teams that will otherwise fill those places. It’s shaping up to be a very tense few months in LS11!