Leeds 1-2 Cheltenham - Behind the Belly' fans view
By Rich B
March 13 2008
Regular Message board contributor, 'BatFastard' provides his humourous views, as well as a detailed match report on the Cheltenham match as Leeds lose 2-1 at home to the relegation threatened side. Readers are advised there may be adult humour and language contained.
If you are not familiar with the work of Batfastard, please read the archive here
Leeds United 1 - 2 Cheltenham
What an absolutely miserable bloody end to an absolutely miserable bloody day. Following a mare of a day at work, I had to belt back from the far side of Bradford through appalling weather and traffic, swiftly change and fly off to the ground, without any time for tea. Yes, that’s right. No tea. None at all. Not even something low calorie.
On the plus side I just had time to nip into the Peacock pre-match for a swift pint of diet lager (well, that’s what I ordered) and an all-too-brief meet-up with fellow messageboarders Tosh, Vincent Vega and 47 members of Mr Vega’s extended family. It was great to meet the two of them, though I was rather disappointed that Tosh – who had been in regular contact with me over the past 24 hours – had completely failed to mention that he and Mr Vega were having a competition to see who could go out in public, wearing the most ridiculous headgear. It was a shame, really, as I would have very much liked to have joined in. For the record, Vince opted for the traditional beany look; intelligently choosing a hat approximately 8 sizes too big for him for maximum comedy effect – but the contest was won quite comfortably by Tosh who simply wrapped a black and white checked tea towel around an old roofing slate and glued it to his head. The simple ideas are always the best ones.
Onto the game and I was expecting an eleven man Cheltenham defence trying to grind out a result, in atrocious weather conditions, with an ultra-negative mindset. I only hoped that, somehow, there would be enough entertainment to keep my mind away from my ever-rumbling belly.
I was therefore somewhat surprised when, after Bex had forced a save out of their keeper in the first minute, they surged upfield and won a succession of corners - a couple of which they went quite close with. As soon as we regained possession, they would instantly regroup and get bodies behind the ball 
again, but they were already showing clear intent that they had not just come here for a goalless draw. Quite worryingly the looks on our players’ faces quite clearly portrayed that this was not the type of game they were expecting to be up against. Interestingly, when a Cheltenham player went down needing treatment, literally half the Leeds team sprinted over to Macca on the touchline, who was clearly barking out a whole range of new instructions at them. Even at that early stage, it was clear that all was not well.
After 10 minutes of being run ragged we managed to regain a touch of composure and we began to pass the ball about, though with little impact in the final third. The game lulled for awhile with us passing the ball neatly and keeping possession in the non-danger zones, with occasional long-ball flurries from our opponents. Under the circumstances, I think I can be forgiven for spending much of this period of the game reminiscing about some of the better pies I have had in the past. Specifically, I recalled my own variant of the pork pie, where – instead of using the traditional offal and trotter remnants – I filled a large pie base with layer after layer of bacon and sausages, all marinated in four and a half pints of brown sauce and baked on a low heat for two hours, before serving in a basket of freshly fried chips. That was a really good one.
The half drifted aimlessly onwards – aside from a glaring miss from Kandol from a header which really did look easier to score from – though I must give credit to the crowd (apart from Tosh, who just sat there looking silly), who really did try to liven the team up by raising the noise levels as best they could in extremely boring circumstances.
Suddenly on 38 minutes, disaster struck. Rui looked the total favourite to win the ball against the Cheltenham midfielder, Bird.... but he unwittingly caught sight of Tosh’s hat, giggled uncontrollably for a second, by which time Bird was past him. Then.... in shameless fashion.... Bird toe-poked it really hard from the edge of the box into the bottom corner past a static Casper. It really was a toe-poke as well – when I was at school, we used to disallow goals like that on the basis that that was how little kiddies played – I really think the FA should consider a ruling on this in the summer.
The half fizzled out with one glaring miss from Bex right at the death when he 
blazed over the bar from about 10 yards, seemingly unaware of how much time and space he had. Trying to weigh things up during the interval, I couldn’t help being reminded of watching England under Sven Goran Erikson. There were so many matches against lower opposition where he tried an elaborate and intricate passing game, with players trying to play to a system that probably took an entire series of lectures just to get the basics over to them. The result was (nearly always) players having to think far too much and play a sort of cerebral game, devoid of any passion or adrenaline. The crowd’s chants near the end of the half of “get into ‘em – f-uck ‘em up” really did seem like the best advice of all possible alternatives.
The second half started a little brighter with a Johnson free kick forcing a good save from the keeper and there was a definite injection of urgency into the game. However, Cheltenham soon got themselves behind the ball again and their keeper was rarely troubled after that first free kick and a skillful flick from Bex just over the bar. Just after the hour, Freedman was brought on for the, frankly, ineffective Howson and the crowd were livid. I’m not sure how much the jeers were pro-Howson or anti-Kandol who they were beginning to scapegoat, but their reaction can only have hindered the players. Two minutes later and an absolute screamer of a goal effectively settled the match, the Cheltenham guy blasting the ball into the top corner from the edge of the box following a half-cleared corner.
The second goal completely killed any tendril of self-belief the players might have had and thereafter practically every other pass went astray, every decent run went unnoticed and the team drifted into drab dysfunctionality. The crowd quite honestly didn’t help – these are the sort of times when we really need to get behind the lads – the constant jeering and silences can’t have helped what is (lets face it) a fledgling side with brittle confidence to begin with.
On the subject of the crowd – and I’m not one who’s usually given to ranting – I was honestly quite appalled at their treatment of Kandol. OK, he was poor, but so were many others. But it is simply not acceptable to bay for one of your own players to be sent off when the referee is booking him or to very vocally demand his substitution. God knows how the lad felt – I’m sorry but when a guy is on the pitch wearing the famous white shirt, then get behind him, ffs! I think a lot of people at ER tonight need to look up the word ‘support’ in a dictionary and remember that we, too, have an important role to play during matches. And tonight, many of us were utterly s-hit in that role. And some of us had very silly hats on, but that’s another story.
Anyway enough of that. Lets talk about pies again for a moment. My favourite creation was the Doner Ke-Cheeseburger Pie, which, as the name suggests, is a large pie containing alternative layers of cheeseburgers and doner kebabs. I must admit, the first time I cooked one, I made an absolute hash of it. In my haste I forgot to remove the bread buns from the cheeseburgers I had bought from McDonalds and the pittas from the kebabs and the bread just toasted and basically charcoaled inside the pie itself. This let the chilli sauce permeate the burger, which itself had a cheese sauce and the whole thing descended into an inedible mulch. Well, almost inedible. The trick of course is to just use plain burgers and kebab meat and go for simplicity and taste over intricacy.
Back to the game and Cheltenham were looking ever more likely to add a third. Is this the most humiliating night ever for Leeds United Football Club I ask myself? They very nearly got it when their winger skinned Kenton and Rui, rolled the ball across goal to an onrushing forward who, fortunately for us, stood on it at the vital moment and allowed us to recover.
Suddenly on 84 minutes a cross and a glanced header from substitute Elding (admittedly an unchallenged glanced header) finds the back of the net. Could we do it? Could we stage a dramatic end-of-game rally and snatch a point from the jaws of defeat? Could we raise our game at that vital moment and seize the day? Could we pen our opponents back and go for the jugular in a single-minded but merciless fashion?
No, we couldn’t actually. ‘Cos we’re not f-ucking good enough. Simple as.
Anyway, stuff the diet, I’m off to comfort eat. Doner Ke-cheesburger pie, here I come!
PLAYER RATINGS (6=Competent)
Ankergren – static for first goal, nearly let in another on stroke of half-time when completely missing a cross. 4/10
Kenton – tried to get forward a lot but his distribution was very poor tonight. 5/10
Richardson – barely noticed him. Didn’t care when he got subbed. 4/10
Rui – very poor by his standards. 4/10
Lubo – slightly better than Rui – but not much 4.5/10
Howson – ineffective. 4/10
Prutton – tried hard 6/10
Johnson – ditto with a little more success than Prutts. 6.5/10
Kilkenny – ditto with a little more running than Johnson, hence (almost by default) m-o-m 7/10
Kandol – poor again. 4/10
Beckford – looks very short on confidence. Couple of good touches 5/10.
Freedman – again added something 6/10
Hughes – energetic and passionate for the short time he was on. I think we need him on the field for leadership purposes if nothing else. 6/10
Elding – took his goal well 6/10
Tosh’s Hat – apart from an initial comedy moment, didn’t really contribute much and was clearly at fault for the first goal. 3/10.
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PREDICTION LEAGUE WINNER 2007
Keep up the good work!!!
were they worse than the 1st half against
bournemouth because that was possibly the
worst i've ever seen us play?
