![]() Sunday, 6th Jan 2013 17:47 by Tim Whelan After a dull first half Leeds came back in the second half to earn a replay with Birmingham City, and we now know that the eventual winners will be rewarded with home fourth round tie at home to Tottenham Hotspur. But rather than the result of this game, most of the discussion has focused on the shockingly poor attendance and the reasons for it. Is it because a lot of fans think the FA Cup is of lesser importance than the chance of winning promotion, or was it down to the poor football that Leeds have been playing during the last few weeks? As I left the station the streets seemed to be deserted and to start with I couldn’t see a single person who was obviously going to the match, so I actually had to check my ticket to make sure that it was a 3pm kick-off and I hadn’t missed it! So it was no surprise when I got to Elland Road that the crowd was looking very sparse indeed in most parts of the stadium, and that there was something of a funeral atmosphere about the place. One of the few fans who did turn up was Diouf’s 11 year-old mini-me, who was sitting quite close to me in the Kop. He’s still got the hairstyle although he wasn’t blacked up this week, but he was still able to was enjoy his new celebrity status as quite a few other fans asked to be photographed with him. There were six changes to the starting line-up compared to the Bolton game, and a couple of these were to give Kenny, Diouf and Byram a rest as they began on the substitutes bench. Austin and Green were missing altogether, but they could be two of the players who have been struck down with the dreaded virus that has been going through the camp. Warnock himself was the most notable absentee, and he stayed at home with the dreaded lurgy to leave his assistant Mick Jones to do the honours on the touchline. The first half Leeds performance was distinctly lacklustre, which might have been down to the lack of a crowd to get them going, although some of the players might have been lacking a bit of energy after suffering from illness. The best effort we had during the first 45 minutes was a header from Pearce which didn’t seem to have that much power, but it beat Doyle to clip the outside of the post. At the other end Birmingham played some neat football coming forward, with Morrisson and Redmond looking lively, but with all their main strikers unavailable for various reasons they were lacking a bit of a cutting edge up front. So in the 32nd minute Wade Elliot decided to do the job himself. He collected the ball up on the halfway line and was allowed to run unchallenged until he was thirty yards from goal, when he hit a superb right foot shot that swerved into the top corner to give Ashdown no chance. So at half time Neil Warnock decided that it was time to wake up and start to take the game seriously. He’d been following the game on his sick bed through good old Yorkshire Radio, and he phoned his instructions through to Mick Jones. The ineffectual Ryan Hall and Aidy White were taken off, to be replaced by first team regulars Diouf and Byram. And it did the trick, with an improved Leeds performance in the second half, and we almost got back into the game straight away. A long ball over the top found Becchio onside, but he placed his header too close to Doyle and allowed the Birmingham keeper the chance to make a fairly comfortable save. As we approached the hour mark I was just starting to think that that might have been our one great chance to keep ourselves in the FA Cup, but then Becchio made amends for his earlier miss. The Argentinian headed another long ball straight to a defender, but Norris did well to win it back on the edge of the area and after some neat footwork he played it through to Becchio, who made no mistake this time as he slotted it past Doyle into the corner. After that we still continued to press forward but didn’t convert our possession into any more decent chances, not even when Somma came on as another striker towards the end. And Birmingham still looked dangerous on the break, with Redmond outpacing our central defenders a number of times, but thankfully their finishing didn’t match the standard of Elliot’s effort in the first half, with all their shots going well over the bar or dragged wide of the far post. The the visitor’s American teenager Packwood suffered a serious injury when Becchio fell on top of him and he landed awkwardly. He left the field with an oxygen mask over his face and a few minutes later I could see the blue lights of the ambulance as it came along Elland Road to pick him up. We can only hope that he makes a full recovery and can resume his career next season. After the long hold-up to allow Packwood to be treated there were six minutes injury time to be played, but that wasn’t long enough for either side to grab a late winner, and we can now look forward to a replay at St. Andrews on Tuesday week. That will be our seventh cup game of the season and the first to be played away from Elland Road, but normal service was resumed when the fourth round draw gave the winners a home tie with Spurs. So the chances are that by the end of January we will be free to concentrate on reaching the play-offs, but at least we can guarantee that if we should get through to play Tottenham there will be more than 11,447 there to witness it. Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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