Heidi's blog Stoke v Leeds 25.10.23
On arrival at Stoke I went straight to the Power League to catch up with a Stoke fan. I met him in the 70s through his brother Ian who travelled with us all over the country on Wallace Arnold coaches. As I chatted to the group of Stoke fans, they said they were sh*t. My answer to that was they were definitely going to raise their game today as they were playing us and I wasn’t wrong.
Team: Meslier, Struijk, Rodon, Byram, Ampadu, Gray, Piroe, Anthony, Gnonto, Gruev, Rutter.
Subs: Summerville for Gnonto, Bamford for Piroe, James for Anthony (triple sub 70), Ayling for Byram, Poveda for Gruev (both 85).
Subs not used: Darlow, Shackleton, Cooper, Kamara.
Leeds lost the game 1-0.
Attendance: 22,587, 2,604 Leeds fans.
Referee: Paul Tierney.
Booked, Rutter, Gnonto, Summerville.
Stoke were the stronger of the two sides in the early stages with Meslier called into action, saving a shot straight at him and kicking the ball away twice. They called for a penalty too but quite rightly the referee played on as their player threw himself to the ground. We had our first chance on 25 minutes, when Piroe saw his shot saved by their keeper’s feet, but we hadn’t been playing well. There was no flow to our game with a lot of passes going astray. At least going in on even terms at half time meant we still had a chance. Whoever was in charge of the scoreboard tonight made a right mess of the teams. Putting us up as Sunderland, what on earth was that all about?
Once again Farke made no changes to the team at half time but to be fair, the team did start off attacking more with Rutter seeing his shot saved by the keeper after a great through pass from Piroe. Some great work from Rutter saw him get into a good position but his shot was wide of the post. Another piece of great play from Rutter saw him put Bamford through in the penalty area only to see him brought down from behind and Leeds awarded a penalty. As I wondered who was going to take it, Bamford walked to the side, so I assumed it wasn’t him. As he returned to the middle with the ball in conversation with Struijk and Summerville I thought one of them would take the penalty. Sadly, Bamford did take it but hit it hard over the crossbar to the dismay of the Leeds fans. To me we had got on top for the first time in the game on 70 minutes once we made the triple substitution, but missing the penalty handed the impetus to Stoke. Prior to this, Summerville had curled a shot in that went narrowly wide of the goal. When they scored from a corner at the near post which I’ve seen has been put down for an own goal to Struijk, there was no coming back for us. He was very unlucky that the ball hit the crossbar then dropped down hitting him on the way into the net.
Very disappointed that we threw the game away in the end as I’d have been happy to get a point. As it was, we got none. Sadly, we have to take the rough with the smooth, but it was getting quite toxic on social media, as the penalty miss hasn’t gone down well with our fans. What I will say is that we do need to have a designated penalty taker now with a reserve in case they are not playing. Sorry Paddy but your penalty taking days have to be over, but I don’t agree with many of our fans, saying he shouldn’t play for us again. I’ll leave it at that as I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion. See you Saturday for the 1230ko against Huddersfield. LUFC – Marching on Together!