Ward: I expect Leeds United to win the title
Last updated 12:38, Monday, 22 September 2008
Carlisle United 0 Leeds United 2: One of Leeds United’s lesser-known nicknames is The Peacocks - a handy reference point for the Yorkshire club’s latest jaunt to Cumbria, which started with flying feathers for Gary McAllister’s flock, but ended with a colourful strut.
Carlisle commenced their fifth engagement with Leeds since last November by scampering at the visiting defence and encouraging moments of startling panic. By the finish, McAllister’s yellow-shirted marauders were encouraging most observers to conclude that League One’s gold standard had just been witnessed at Brunton Park.
“I expect Leeds to win the league,” predicted McAllister’s rival boss, United’s John Ward, after Jermaine Beckford’s 86th-minute bullet had killed off thoughts of a late blue revival. “I’ve seen a number of other teams and they are as good as any of them.” The first thing to do here is run Ward’s words through the scanner, to see if by hurling praise at the opposition Carlisle’s manager is diverting the gaze from his own team’s defects.
To be scrupulously fair, Ward did list some of the reasons the Cumbrians were cut down on their own soil by Leeds for the second time in four months. Such as: inferior ball-retention, in midfield and from the back; rusty work around the visiting penalty area for the second straight game; and a lack of consistent supply from the centre and the flanks.
Here’s the problem. When your arch-creators such as Marc Bridge-Wilkinson and Cleveland Taylor are having an inspiration shortfall, just about the last team of opponents you wish to see scooping up the ball and coming back at you is Leeds, especially with a six-match unbeaten run providing the Yorkshire tailwind. Taylor’s misfortune was to have one of his less effective days against Aidan White, McAllister’s 16-year-old left-back whose performance for 54 minutes here was a thing of pure, fizzing promise.
“The better side won, and I’ve got no grumbles about the result,” added Ward, who also pointed the torch towards Carlisle’s imperfect marking from a corner which allowed Luciano Becchio to claim Leeds’ opening goal.
United’s manager swerved the idea that Ben Williams’ hesitant lurch from his line also played its part in the Argentine’s opener, but there is a sad obligation to commit the goalkeeper’s error to print today.
Bash all this onto the page, however, and it doesn’t alter a jot the most important fact of the day: that Leeds are a high-class unit for whom something will have to go disastrously wrong if the gate to the Championship isn’t to swing open next spring.
No vantage point at Brunton Park obscured the view of performers like Jonathan Douglas, who organised Leeds’ attacks from the base of midfield to superb effect, and Fabian Delph, a young master of the central ground who isn’t 19 for two more months. Carlisle can themselves take from this tussle the memory of Simon Hackney’s dangerous display, and a second-half performance of genuine persistence, even if - as at Scunthorpe the previous weekend - it put no points on the table.
September is no time for coronations. Early risers like Leicester, Scunthorpe and Oldham might take issue with Ward’s keenness to anoint Leeds as the division’s foremost unit after just seven games. That’s an argument for the punters. But over 90 minutes this looked very much like the certainties beating the contenders.
After four emotion-scattering clashes between these two rivals last season, this was a slightly less absorbing hour-and-a-half’s entertainment. In terms of Leeds’ superiority, however, it was the starkest yet. McAllister’s men found their range after a frenzied opening 20 minutes from Carlisle in which Hackney clipped the bar with an off-target cross, the winger skinned Frazer Richardson moments later, Taylor wasted a decent far-post cross from his fellow winger, and even Paul Thirlwell appeared on the edge of the box to try his luck.
United’s frantic chasing was unsettling such experienced heads as Paul Telfer, Leeds’ 36-year-old centre-half who seemed to spend those opening moments locked in reverse. But a tidy counter-attack, which ended with Douglas volleying wide after a rare Richard Keogh mistake (the big centre-half replaced the injured Peter Murphy to generally solid effect), ought to have sounded the alarm.
The sirens went off again when young White supplied Beckford in the box, only for Evan Horwood to intercept. Then Leeds finally smashed Carlisle’s resistance.
First, Williams repelled Neil Kilkenny’s shot with his legs, but the United goalkeeper then made an unconvincing move for the New Zealander’s corner, which was headed back into the danger area by Telfer and then stabbed high into the under-protected net by the lurking Becchio.
For the third straight home match (the previous two having been won), Carlisle had conceded the game’s first goal. This time, their phoenix never rose. Danny Carlton and Bridge-Wilkinson had late pot-shots in the first-half and then, with Scott Dobie on for the concussed Danny Graham at the interval, they went about the urgent business of salvaging something from the afternoon.
The problem here was that Leeds were just as keen to get the points in the can with a second goal.
Becchio and Beckford both went close before Carlisle stirred again: Hackney cutting in and blasting against a defender, Dobie dropping a header fractionally wide, Hackney again shooting straight at David Lucas, and Rui Marques rising to deflect Carlton’s header just over.
Michael Bridges, passed fit on the eve of battle, eventually appeared to noisy acclaim, but even the illustrious former Leeds man couldn’t plot Carlisle’s revival.
Instead, the visitors slotted into full counter-punching mode, Richardson curling a left-footer onto the bar and Beckford slicing through and drawing a fine, sliding tackle from the relentless Horwood. Jennison Myrie-Williams, on for a bright Carlisle debut in the 72nd minute, was then a millimetre away from converting Hackney’s deflected cross at the far post.
It was Leeds’ greatest reprieve, and their response was to ambush Bridge-Wilkinson four minutes from time and sweep upfield: the classy Becchio leading the charge, which was ended coldly by Beckford when he slid home Robert Snodgrass’ pinpoint cross.
Of the five recent Carlisle-Leeds skirmishes, this was the least compelling but the most conclusive. On tape and in the memory now is the manner in which the Elland Road posse laid down their superiority under September’s sun; how they displayed the qualities to which the Cumbrians must aspire.
“I really don’t think we’re far away at all,” said Hackney, ultra-positive in deed and word.
A one-point gap between United and Saturday’s enemy after seven games suggests he’s right. But that doesn’t make Leeds’ long-awaited migration back to the Championship any less likely.
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