The Scratching Shed

The goals from our 1-1 draw and dismal display at home to Wycombe. The match did bring with it a new record for Simon Grayson whose Leeds United side have now remained undefeated at home for a year. TSS’ match review can be found here.

Leeds United 1 (Howson) Wycombe Wanderers 1 (Pittman) 
Elland Road, 09-01-2010

I’ll get a match review on in the morning, but already managed to find some highlights of the win, so enjoy. An early goal for Robert Snodgrass before Leeds went 2-1 down. Jermaine Beckford headed us level after just five minutes though, before Leigh Bromby scored a beauty and Becks rounded things off in injury time.

Not a vintage performance from Leeds, who, as usual insisted on doing things the hard way, but a great result to round off the year. Credit where it’s due for Stockport though who gave us a good game and attacked throughout.

Massive thanks to the fans of Stockport too who helped clear the pitch and stands so todays game could go ahead.

Simon Grayson has done his best to play down Beckford’s strop in yesterdays post-match interview where he told the waiting reporter that;

“I’ve had a brief chat with Jermaine and I will speak to him again on Monday. We will deal with it internally and get to the bottom of it but these things happen all the time”

Not sure this is the kind of thing I want happening all the time, but hopefully Grayson has made Beckford regret his actions. No word from Jermaine as yet and since he rarely does any interviews at all, I aren’t holding my breath for a public apology.

A lot has been said about the fans reaction to his antics, but the fans are well within their rights to boo a player who has shown such disregard to the management. This isn’t the kind of behaviour that will be tolerated by the Leeds fans, and whilst I accept the strop may have risen from passion and frustration, it doesn’t make it any more acceptable. Beckford isn’t bigger than the team. He needs to learn that.

Anyway, the highlights of yesterdays action are below, including Beckford’s reaction to his number coming up.

Despite the invariable lack of live football on the BBC nowadays, the service they’re providing for us humble football fans online has grown into something special this season.

I was just browsing through the Leeds United section on BBC Sport and found a nice little audio clip from Simon Grayson’s interview with Radio Leeds included in the reaction page to yesterdays win.

The clip from Simon Grayson on BBC Radio Leeds is just the start of the BBC’s extended coverage this season. The Football League Show and Match of the Day are available on the brilliant BBC iPlayer which is undoubtedly the best addition to the BBC’s service in many years, whilst the goals from previous league fixtures are available on the site too. Here you can see the Jermaine Beckford brace that secured us three points against Exeter City on the opening day this season.

The BBC also continues to help those that can’t get to matches by publishing a live feed on their site with details of what’s going on. Add that to the news, stats and 606 features and the BBC have to be applauded for their efforts.

I know a lot of you think the license fee is unreasonable, and perhaps it is? £142.50 a year is a lot of money for a couple of TV channels, but when you consider everything else they’re spending it on these days I think they’re doing a good job. Sky Sports were the ones that made football more expensive when they came in and threw money at the game to capture the monopoly. On a much tighter budget that has to be spread across many services, the BBC has really delivered the goods in spite of Sky’s financial might and continued reign.

The BBC should be congratulated for the service they deliver to the millions of football fans across this nation. They take a lot of stick when they get something wrong but are rarely praised for the things they get right.