Crystal Palace     0​

Leeds United       0

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15th March 2026.  EFL Premier League

25,155.

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There is no quote more appropriate for Leeds United than that uttered by former YEP and Athletic journalist Phil Hay on his ‘retirement’ from covering Leeds’ games when he said that Leeds: “don’t do simple, they don’t take the clearly marked path when there’s a minefield to explore, but they do not throw in the towel either.”

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In a few words, that pretty much summed up another disappointing London trip, when not only did the football gods conspire against us as they often do in the capital, but our own shortcomings caused us to shoot ourselves in the foot again.

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On paper, this looked like another tough awayday, but we also knew that if we played our ‘A’ game, then there was no reason why we couldn’t grab a vital three-point haul that, looking at our rivals’ games, ought to restore the cushion between us and the dreaded drop zone.

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It all looked to be going our way for once, south of Watford Gap, when our old friend Will Hughes handled the ball in the Palace area, and referee Thomas Bramall pointed at the spot. Bramall is the one from Sheffield, remember? And the one of whom Spurs’ manager, Igor Tudor, recently said, “I don't like 'home team referee' Bramall” after Bramall controversially allowed a Fulham goal in a 2-1 win over Spurs recently. Bramall is just another in a long line of sub-standard referees plying their trade in the Premier League these days, probably a result of so many having to be fast-tracked to fill all the positions required by VAR. Anyway, nothing wrong with his penalty decision.

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But then we spurned the opportunity to take a priceless lead as Dominic Calvert-Lewin somehow managed to miss the target from 12 yards. You see, for me, DCL should have been nowhere near that spot kick. Dom has been out of nick for a while now; I’ve mentioned it here in my last few reports. I have no idea what has changed, but he’s lost the edge that he found earlier this season when we all thought he’d be back in the England squad in time for the World Cup. Not on the back of his recent displays, though. He’s out of form, so why allow him to take the penalty? Most Leeds fans will remember a certain Patrick Bamford being in this exact same situation a couple of years ago; he couldn’t buy a goal, he was hopelessly out of form, so we gave him a shot from 12 yards to get his mojo back! It didn’t work then, and it didn’t work today.  Maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh, maybe it was just the usual London curse! But it’s a detail, and in the Premier League, these details count for so much.

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So, we shot ourselves in the foot again, and we managed to find that ruddy minefield again. The thing is, though, we have learned that if you don’t take your chances when they come round in the Prem, you often seem to annoy those football gods, who then conspire against you to make a bad situation even worse! And so it was today.

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Referee Bramall, seconds before the halftime whistle, decided that Gabby Gudmundsson’s challenge deserved a yellow card – the numpty having failed to penalise very similar challenges by Palace players earlier in the half. And, he clearly had no recollection of already having given Gabby a yellow; had he had half a brain and remembered that fact, I and the rest of the football world are sure he’d not have given the second one! It was just sodding bad luck that Bramall failed to act consistently and failed to keep track of what he was doing! Quite why Leeds are plagued this season by incompetent refs making unfathomable decisions, goodness only knows, has someone cracked a mirror somewhere at Elland Road?

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Fortunately, all was not lost. As Phil Hay also pointed out, despite the slings and arrows of misfortune regularly firing our way over the years, one thing has been constant: our response. We do not throw in the towel. And again, so it was today. Leeds battled manfully throughout the second half, and according to various reports, we created Premier League history by ensuring that Palace managed not a single shot on target all game, something never before achieved by a team facing ten men for the whole of the second half. Who keeps track of all these stats? I will also mention that I did have some hope we’d get out of this with a point, having watched Palace recently face the same situation against Spurs. It was slightly different in that Palace already had a 1-3 first-half lead in that one, but even so, they were awful in the second half against the Tottenham ten and failed to add to their score that night.

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We cannot escape the fact that we have missed another huge opportunity today. All of the teams involved in the relegation scrap have drawn this weekend, so had we taken all three points, it would have been a brilliant weekend. And the opportunity was there had we scored that spot kick. But, in the end, no real damage was done, a draw away anywhere in the Premier League is a decent result, whatever the circumstances and we still have more than enough winnable home games coming up to secure the prize of survival. But we have to avoid any more minefields.