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 Saturday 20th January 2007, Coca-Cola Championship, Elland Road, Kick-Off 3:00pm
Albion: Russell Hoult, Paul McShane, Curtis Davies (c), Neil Clement, Paul Robinson, Zoltan Gera, Jonathan Greening, Richard Chaplow, Robert Koren, Diomansy Kamara (Stuart Nicholson 89), Kevin Phillips. Subs not used: Pascal Zuberbuhler (gk), Jared Hodgkiss, Rob Davies, Darren Carter
Referee: Neil Swarbrick (Lancashire)
Half-Time: Leeds United
1-3 Albion
Attendance: 20,019 Conditions:
Bitterly cold with heavy rain showers
The Independent:
Dennis Wise's unseemly grapple with Diomansy Kamara probably
owed more to frustration with his own players than with the admittedly
provocative Senegalese forward. After all, Kamara's marker, the hapless
Hayden Foxe, never got close enough to lay a hand on him in an 89-minute
runaround.
The
Leeds manager said his defenders had been instructed to keep tight
to a forward who frankly looked too good for the Championship. Yet
Leeds, clearly all too aware
of Kamara's ability, repeatedly backed off, never more obviously and
embarrassingly than in a moment before half-time when their
tormentor-in-chief was allowed to turn on the edge of the area,
unchallenged, and flight a delightful, curling shot into the far corner.
Wise will doubtless find himself in trouble with the
authorities after the referee, Neil Swarbrick, was left with no choice but
to send him off, but as he correctly pointed out: "That's the least of my
worries."
Despite going ahead after three minutes through Tore Andre
Flo, Leeds were two
goals adrift by half-time. Jonathan Greening's 20-yard drive brought West
Bromwich Albion level before Kamara's two strikes.
In other circumstances, Alan Thompson's high-quality
free-kick in the second half would have been no more than academic, but it
did least spare Leeds
the humiliation of replacing Southend at the foot of the Championship - for
now. At six points from safety, defeat in their next game, away to Hull City
a week tomorrow, is unthinkable.
Before then, the
Leeds manager is taking his squad away to
Cyprus for a few days. Apart
from helping his players recover from the trauma of a third loss to West
Bromwich this season, presumably his main priority will be to teach them the
rudiments of defending in the hope of improving their record of conceding 52
goals in 28 Championship games.
As for
West Bromwich, whose last eight fixtures have yielded 23 goals, an
appetising FA Cup tie against Wolverhampton Wanderers awaits at the weekend.
They approach it in rude health.
wba.co.uk
Tony Mowbray: "It can drag your team down if a monkey, like our wait for an away win, is still on your back. The longer those statistics go on, like our away form, the more people beat you up with them. So it was important to get a victory on the road. “Leeds are a great club with some very good players. When they scored their second the noise their fans created was something special - I remember it from my playing days with Boro. “The positives for us are that we managed to see off that threat in the last 20 minutes. It was very character-building for the team. We've got a very happy dressing room because the players feel they had to dig in for each other when the chips were down. We showed some resistance to what was an onslaught on our box. There have possibly been times this season when we haven't been as resolute, so I think that's a positive sign for us. "Knowing this team can win away from home will hopefully give us the impetus going into next week's big cup match. We carried on our average of three goals a games for the past few matches so we're always a threat to teams. The quality of our goals was excellent today. We could have gone on and got a lot of goals. But the positive for me is that we've won a tight game. The confidence and belief that will give the players by them showing that determination and character at the end is important." Source: wba.co.uk
Dennis Wise: "The game had the lot. "In the second half we played well, but in the first half we were poor. I asked them afterwards 'how can you do that?' I don't understand that and I told them so. "I was disappointed with the goals we conceded. You can't defend the way we defended. We were asleep at the back at times. It was poor defending and they know it. We seemed to drop off too much. We looked afraid of Kamara's pace, but when we nailed a few things at half-time we did it a lot better. "They are a side with a lot of quality, but in the end we deserved something. We had chances and we pinned them in, but it never happened. "He (Diomansy Kamara) took his time coming off and I told him to get off. We'd had enough of him. He'd been making gestures to the crowd and what have you and I think we were all pleased when he came off." Source: leeds.com
The win is Albion's first at Elland Road since October 14, 1978, when goals from Tony Brown and Cyrille Regis (2) guided a Ron Atkinson led side to a 3-1 victory.
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