Carling Cup - 2nd Round / 23rd August 2011
Doncaster Rovers 1-2 Leeds United
The second time I've visited the Keepmoat Stadium in a year and let me just start off by saying that this ground has no atmosphere whatsoever. I'm not a fan of rounded stadiums anyway but this ground is seriously just a bowl of misery. The fans are mute, although they try to make an atmosphere by playing a drum in the south stand. Leeds fans were in good voice, at points we lacked to keep a song going and in those moments the silence of the home supporters was revealed. They rarely sang but when they did, you could recognise those familiar tin-pot chants, such as the 'we love you' chant. No noise was made, even when they were 1-0 up.
Overall I thought the performance from United was acceptable, but only after the second half. The first half performance was atrocious and we went in to the dugout at 1-1 after a sublime slice of magic from Ramon Nunez. The defence looked out of place. O'Dea played well, apart from when we misjudged the flight of the ball and almost helped the ball a long to the Doncaster forward. White was okay, but he had a tough time playing against Giles Barnes on his side. O'Brien was disappointing too, not great. He's had a tough time, not sure why he's playing all over the place. Just glad that big Paddy is back. Paul Connolly also looked out of form. Usually he is a reliable source but in the Donny game he couldn't stop the Rovers winger getting past or cutting inside.
Paul Rachubka also had an okay game. He made some good stops but none of them were clean often bouncing off his palms in unknown directions. He told Yorkshire Evening Post that he would like to challenge for the chance to play in between the sticks every week but I think that Lonergan is the better of the two and Grayson knows this. Rachubka will make around five appearances at most this campaign.
Zak Thompson in the middle of the park played okay. Nothing really stood out about him and he didn't get much time on the ball. He made some good tackles and played the ball smartly out to the wings on several occasions. Howson is starting to be a bit of mystery player. Some games he plays and some games you don't even realise he's on the field. Him and Thompson were doing were doing far too much ball watching and zonal marking for my liking. They were giving the Doncaster midfield far too much room to run into and to pass into. The two wingers Sam and Nunez hard a difficult first half. The ball didn't get played to them much in the first half but the possession count for the two wingers rose and the second half began. Sam looked impressive but he does need to get him crosses in earlier. Nunez obviously got the two goals and they were two marvellous goals. Despite this the Honduran didn't see much of the both between the goals. Nunez seems a bit slow on his decision making too. He often makes runs and then stops, had a judder about and then loses the ball. You know that if he could do something it would be amazing but he's tripping over the ball a lot, especially when he gets right in the defender's face.
Now onto the strikers. I picked up as the game went on that Andrew Keogh looked to be playing as an advanced striker, whereas Ross McCormack played just behind him in more of a 4-4-1-1 formation. Ross has been known to play there before but I would have proffered to see him making the runs upfront because we all know that he can make the very best of runs. Take the goal against Burnley as an example. Keogh didn't play great, he's playing as a poor man's Becchio at the moment really.
All in all there were some good parts of the game and some bad. Charlie Taylor also played in the second half and played well. He is a small lad but he was good at the overlap.
A good game to watch, there were quite a lot of chances and all good ones too. Now the whites travel to Suffolk to play a seriously out of form Ipswich who have conceded twelve goals in two games. I will be hoping for a win looking at the Ipswich form and they also ended the Peterborough game with nine men which suggests they will also have suspensions for our game this weekend.
Prediction for the visit to Ipswich:
Ipswich Town 0-3 Leeds United
I'm such a Leeds fan.
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