O'Dea Nets Fergie Time Winner At Peterborough TSS October 22, 2011 Match reviews 15 Comments Suffering from a fatal case of man flu and up at an hour of the day usually reserved for matches on the south coast, a trip to London Road to take on a side who were refusing to conform to their place as Championship relegation fodder – stunning Cardiff with a 4-3 victory earlier in the week – wasn’t filling me with much optimism. But within five minutes of kick-off former Peterborough United loanee Adam Clayton found Andy Keogh in the box who showed great skill before firing in the opener. 0-1. And Leeds continued to impress, closing down quickly and denying Peterborough time and space, whilst also carving out more chances themselves. However, The Whites’ well-documented defensive frailties returned to haunt them as a Peterborough corner managed to find it’s way across to the far post into the path of Gabriel Zakuani who duly converted on 23 minutes. 1-1. The game slowed a little from there with chances few and far between, but the referee gave Leeds United a huge advantage shortly before the break sending Lee Tomlin off for a challenge on Andy Keogh. An undeniably poor challenge which left Keogh in need of the magic sponge treatment, but it didn’t look like a sending off offence at the time. Both managers agreed it was a red card in post match interviews however, but I haven’t seen a replay yet so can’t really comment further. Either way, it’s all swings and roundabouts they say and Christ knows we’ve had more than our fair share of harsh red card decisions already this season. As you’d expect with a man advantage, The Whites started to dominate from there with Ross McCormack denied from a one-on-one attempt and Jonny Howson firing over the bar either side of the break. After two excellent chances to regain the lead had gone begging, flashbacks of previous games Leeds had struggled to kill off with a man advantage started to creep in. But Adam Clayton ensured those fears were short-lived with an excellent strike from the edge of the area leaving Peterborough with an uphill battle ahead. 1-2 Following the goal it’s quite possible my body put me in some sort of trance-like state so it could use all available energy to combat my severe case of man flu. It’s either that, or absolutely nothing happened for the 30 odd minutes that followed and my brain is refusing to relive the boredom. Nevertheless, Leeds looked to be heading towards an easy, if somewhat uninspiring three points. But – and long suffering Leeds fans know only too well that there’s always a ‘but’ – Leeds United’s defence seemed to fall into a trance-like state of their own, failing to deal with another high ball sent into the box leaving Mark Little with an embarrassingly easy equaliser. The smugness emanating from Son-Of-Scum Ferguson was almost palatable. 2-2 Only stoppage time remained and it looked as though Leeds were going to be punished by a late equaliser for the second time in four days. The minimum four minutes passed but the referee – who had presumably been unhappy with time-wasting attempts from the home side – allowed play to continue for another minute and half, leaving Darren O’Dea to smash home an ironic winner in a time-frame commonly referred to as ‘Fergie Time’ – something his son Darren, and Peterborough’s chairman took understandable exception to. More ups and downs… Firstly, let me apologise to the 4,000 strong army of Leeds United fans who I infected with man flu today. Missing family engagements or work is one thing, but a Leeds game? Unthinkable. That said, at 2-2 I was wishing I’d stayed in bed. Failure to kill the game off almost cost Leeds dearly once again. Our vulnerability from set pieces seems to have returned since Andy Lonergan was ruled out with injury, and we totally lacked aerial presence in the box throughout. With the run we have ahead, the return of our defensive problems is a major concern. I’m not sure what to make of Peterborough. They’re not a particularly skilful side, nor are they a physical side who slug games out to secure points, they just seem to play with a level of self-belief that is lifting a team of below-par Championship players to heights they shouldn’t be capable of reaching. The results Peterborough have registered so far can’t be written off by the unpredictable nature of the league, because that unpredictability comes from the fact so many teams are so closely matched. But Peterborough aren’t one of them – they’re so far out of their depth at this level, they should be playing with life-jackets on – and I don’t mean that disrespectfully, it’s just astonishing that a team with so little resources has achieved what they have. It’s difficult to judge how we stand ahead of Birmingham and Cardiff City next week based on this result because Peterborough are routinely giving the bigger clubs a run for their money – 7-1 Ipswich, 4-3 Cardiff, 3-2 Portsmouth and only narrow defeats to West Ham (1-0), Blackpool (2-1) and ourselves (3-2). At this stage of the season, I’m just happy we left London Road with all three points. When all is said and done, we have a team that has won five and drawn two of our last seven games and that should be all the encouragement we need with a tough run of fixtures ahead. Maybe we’ve forgotten how to lose? Added Darren Ferguson’s post match strop to The Scratching Shed’s YouTube channel. I felt the irony of Alex Ferguson’s son whining about “Fergie Time” was comedy gold.