Wolverhampton Wanderers 4 Leeds United 1

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Yet again events in a game conspired to render it almost impossible to win. Playing what looks at the moment to be far and away the best side in the Championship albeit one of the most expensively assembled with Costa and Neves costing Wolves around £30 million, Leeds shot themselves in the boot when Ronnie Vieira contrived to pick up two yellow cards and an early bath. Having faced a first half storm from the hungry looking Wolves, to get back in the dressing room only 2 – 0 down didn’t seem too bad and when, almost straight from the restart, Alioski swept in a glorious volley and the Wolves seemed to have run their legs off, a draw was the least we might have expected as Leeds began to hunt in packs themselves.

Sadly, that all came to an abrupt end when Vieira made his second poor tackle of the night and had to face the walk of shame back down the tunnel. From that point on there was never much chance of Leeds finding that equaliser and indeed as Wolves freshened up their legs with some even more powerful looking substitutes the task was hopeless. Leeds conceded four goals for the first time in over eighteen months reminding us of that 2015/2016 season when we did it twice, at Brighton and at home to Huddersfield.

I don’t think we need to dwell too long on this result though, other than to accept that Wolves are a far more powerful, potent and skilful side than we are even at our best and I’d be surprised if they don’t now go on to secure one of the automatic promotion spots. Who knows what might have transpired had we kept XI on the pitch, we certainly looked much better in the fifteen minutes after the break and that’s what we have to cling to as we turn our attentions to a tricky looking game at Oakwell. We have to hope that the players can shrug it off in the same way and come out against Barnsley all guns blazing. Our luck has to change soon surely; our recent games have been littered with controversial refereeing decisions, red cards, near misses and penalties and while you can argue that Vieira was clumsy you still have to put some of it down to pure bad luck. These things happen but why they keep happening to us so regularly does baffle me.

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