FA CUP/Leeds 1 Tottenham 3:BEATING Hartlepool away next Saturday is, in the greater scheme of things, more important to Leeds than knocking Spurs out of the FA Cup last night, but no-one who saw this hugely committed and, at times, frantic cup tie could accuse the United players of harbouring their resources.
As at Manchester United in the third round, and 10 days ago at White Hart Lane, the Yorkshire side produced the sort of performance which both belied their status and suggested that if they do not get promoted this season, something will have gone very wrong.
For all their insistence that the pressure was on their opponents, there was still scope for the Leeds players to be nervous in front of an impressively raucous full house of just over 38,000. That much was evident in the first minute, when Andrew Hughes’s attempt to clear Niko Kranjcar’s ambitious diagonal ball simply presented the ball to Jermain Defoe. It was as well for Hughes that the England striker fluffed his shot.
It did not take long for the putative underdogs to settle, however. Picked out by Michael Doyle, Jonny Howson curled a neat shot narrowly over the bar, rather closer to the target than Sebastien Bassong’s side-footed volley at the other end soon afterwards. On a pitch still greasy after a hour or so of wet snow before kick-off, the pace in the opening period was unrelenting.
Defoe was the next to go close, thumping a drive just wide from 18 yards, but again Leeds responded. Leigh Bromby’s looping cross should have been an easy gather for Heurelho Gomes inside his own six-yard box, but Jermaine Beckford’s remarkable spring saw the striker, who already has 24 goals to his name this season, get his forehead above the Spurs goalkeeper’s reaching hands. Somehow the ball came back off the bar.
If Gomes was unconvincing, his opposite number Casper Ankergren was at his best when Defoe beat the offside trap, narrowing the angle and getting enough on the shot to divert it wide. The Danish goalkeeper also had to react quickly when Bromby’s accidental deflection of Gareth Bale’s cross threatened to sneak in at his near post.
So well was Ankergren playing, in fact, that it took what was surely a huge slice of fortune for Spurs to beat him. There was nothing lucky about the run and pull-back with which David Bentley left Defoe free in the penalty area, but a poor first touch meant the subsequent left-foot shot appeared to be badly sliced. With Ankergren hopelessly wrong-footed, the ball drifted over Naylor and inside the angle of post and bar.
Stung by the injustice, for the remainder of the half Leeds flung themselves forward. Moments before the break the pressure finally told, when Beckford’s swivelling volley was saved by Gomes, but Luciano Becchio followed up to turn the ball over the line.
It was nothing less than Leeds deserved after the most hectic 45 minutes of football that Spurs must have been involved with for some time, and the half-time message from Harry Redknapp can only have been to calm down and try and impose their superior passing game.
For five minutes after the restart they did exactly that, and should have retaken the lead when Bentley again found Defoe with an intelligent cut-back. Again Defoe failed to connect properly, but the ball came out to Nico Krancjar. The Croatian’s shot was wide, but very nearly turned in by a sliding Peter Crouch. Leeds attempted to up the pace, but the conviction that characterised their first-half efforts was no longer quite so obvious.
Sensing the change, Spurs began to play with a little more belief, and Ankergren had to save well, first from Michael Dawson and then from a rising Bentley drive. He was finally beaten, only for Defoe to be ruled offside.
Tottenham were flowing, though, and in the 74th minute Leeds finally broke. It was no surprise that Bentley, on the right, should be the provider with a low driven cross, nor that Defoe, from close range, should provide the appropriate finishing touch.
The Leeds manager Simon Grayson turned to his bench, but even though Redknapp named three academy players among his substitutes, the gulf in resources was still obvious. Defoe’s hat-trick, completed in stoppage time when he raced clear of the defence and rounded Ankergren, put the issue beyond doubt.
LEEDS UTD: Ankergren, Bromby, Naylor, Michalik, Hughes (White 76), Howson, Doyle, Johnson (Crowe 86), Snodgrass, Beckford, Becchio (Grella 86). Subs not used: Alan Martin, Robinson, Somma, Hatfield. Booked: Johnson, Beckford.
TOTTENHAM: Gomes, Corluka, Dawson, Bassong, Bale, Bentley, Huddlestone, Jenas, Kranjcar, Crouch, Defoe. Subs not used: Alnwick, Palacios, Modric, Rose, Dervite, Parrett, Fredericks. Booked: Bentley.
Referee: A Marriner (W Midlands).
