Sheffield Wednesday 1

Leeds United                1

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As interesting as football match statistics can be, at the end of the day they often don’t relate to results! We saw almost identical statistics from Leeds in the games against Preston and then Birmingham and yet one of those games yielded an easy three points and the other a disappointing defeat. I guess there is no statistic for “stupid defensive errors”.

Once again last night at Hillsborough, had we been watching boxing, there was only one possible outcome from the three judges; even the really biased ones we often see in that sport! Leeds had a current season record 25 attempts at the Wednesday goal compared with just 10 for the home side. We got 7 of ours on target to just 4 from them and we had 8 more corners than they did. Indeed, the only statistic they scored higher on was fouls, as they, like many teams before them, had to resort to methods outside the rulebook to try to stop us. We all wondered how we would respond to that Birmingham defeat and there was just a small doubt creeping in that maybe, just maybe, we weren’t as good as we thought. Well, we got an emphatic answer last night; we’re fine thank you very much and when we get Kemar and Pablo back we’ll be even finer!

The only reason we didn’t come away with all three points was a worldie strike from Adam Reach – and if he meant to do that then I’m a Dutchman – and some poor finishing.  Especially when shooting from distance we do have this annoying habit of ballooning the ball over the bar every bleedin’ time! It is the one thing that still looks very much like last season's Leeds not Bielsa’s Leeds.

So, on we go to Hull on Tuesday, and if I was a betting man I’d have to have a few quid on Leeds in that one if we can reproduce a similar level of performance. Birmingham we knew didn’t often get beat, Wednesday are only 4 points adrift of us in mid-table and were confident and upbeat after their win at Villa Park; Hull have… well, I can’t really think of anything positive that Hull have achieved thus far this season. Recent defeats at Reading and Wigan tell the story of their season although it will be interesting to see how they get on at home to Middlesbrough today; another chance to compare ourselves with the RIversiders.