Leeds United v Millwall

Saturday 8th February 2025 - Elland Road, Leeds

FA Cup - Round 4

I’ve been sat staring at my screen for ages not knowing where to start with my blog today. Reading about those fans who are glad we are out of the FA Cup and can concentrate on the league, whilst they are entitled to their opinions, it doesn’t automatically mean that we will be promoted. I’ve seen too many times over the years how throwing the towel in has meant we capitulated rather than went from strength not strength. Winning breeds winning as far as I’m concerned. The defeat today isn’t so much about the final score but the way that we lost the game. Whilst we made so many changes, all it did was make the team look as if they hadn’t played together at all and were very unbalanced. I do feel when we had a reserve league team, that gave fringe team members chance of a game so that they were ready to slot into the first team when needed. The lack of game time tells from my point of view plus playing out of position didn’t help some of the players today. Also, fans paid good money and many travelled hundreds of miles to come to the game today and we should have put up more of a fight. Losing happens yes, but I’d still expect players to give their all on the pitch. All in all, that was a disappointing performance, but I’ll get over it as I always do.

Team: Darlow, Ampadu, Guilavogui, Gnonto, Ramazani, Rothwell, Byram, Schmidt, Struijk, Joseph, Sam Chambers age 17 getting his first start.

Subs:  Firpo for Guilavogui (69), Tanaka for Byram (69), Solomon for Chambers (69), Piroe for Gnonto (80), Debayo for Ampadu (83).

Subs not used:  Meslier, Gruev, Bogle, Aaronson.

Leeds lost the game 2-0.

Attendance:   34,923, 1,838 Millwall fans..

Referee:  Gavin Ward.

Booked:  Guilavogui.

We did have some good chances in the first half, but their keeper made good saves from Gnonto and Ramazani. Once Millwall went on the attack against the run of play they scored when their shot took a deflection and ended up in the bottom corner of the net. There again just before it, they had put two of our players on the floor on the wing, the most blatant push on Schmidt that didn’t get punished. Given a free kick would have meant no first goal for them. They nearly got a second when we started passing the ball across the back and were caught out, but luckily the ball hit the crossbar and came back out again. We did look for an equaliser and their keeper made a save from Chambers to see them go into the break in the lead.

I changed seats with my daughter at half time to go back to my normal place in the Kop. Although Leeds came out at the start in search of an equaliser when Gnonto saw his shot saved by their keeper, Millwall counter attacked and went straight to the other end and got a second goal. Although at the time we thought it was game over, we got a penalty a few minutes later when Gnonto was brought down in the box. As I wondered out loud who our penalty taker would be, the lad in front of me said Struijk who I’d forgotten about. If only as he ran up to take the penalty, he’d carried on instead of stopping and starting again, as I feel the momentum would have taken the ball past their keeper instead of him saving it onto the bottom of the post and away. Rothwell saw their keeper make more saves from him, but it got to the stage when I knew we were never going to score which proved to be the case.

Looking back at the chances we had, yes, their keeper had an outstanding game, was their man of the match for sure and the stats will show we probably did a lot better than it looked. The football being poor for long times in between contributed to it looking a very poor game on the pitch overall.

I’d felt on top of the world after the last two games as they had given me hope for the first time in a long while. Admittedly having had the death of my husband to contend with has impacted on things greatly too. At the moment I’m feeling demoralised, but I know that once I’ve slept on things, they never seem as bad, and I can move on. I know we are heading to Watford on Tuesday and that game along with the next few, will tell me whether we can carry on our good run in the league or not. As always, I will make my judgement by what I see on the pitch so let’s hope we have a positive outcome, and my fears will be unjustified.

See you there, LUFC – Marching on Together!