 Sunday, 1st Apr 2012 12:21 by Mark Monk Hornets stung Leeds to their ninth home defeat of the season after Iwelumo double. With Darren O'Dea, to quote Neil Warnock "licking lollipops at home" (well actually he was at the game because we met him afterwards!), he was forced to bring back Paul Connolly at right back as the defensive unit was reshuffled slightly to accomodate for O'Dea's three-match ban for reaching the 10 yellow card mark. Despite all the talk of sneaking into the play-offs and an impressive, hard-fought win at Millwall last week, the imagination of the West Yorkshire public being captured is still some way off as just 21,766 turned-up and other than a handfull of Watford fans who made it up the M1, the majority will honestly wonder why they bothered. The chattering and clinking of the Chardonnay glasses in the East Stand Upper was the nosiest sound before kick-off and the Kop only sprung to life when Watford opted to change ends and on-loan Manchester United keeper Tomas Kuszcsak was taunted about his parent club connections and the fact he was in goal when Jermaine Beckford grabbed THAT winner in 2010. Within five minutes, you could hear a pin drop as Deeney and Iwelumo combined brilliantly and the veteran Scottish international opened the scoring for the visitors. An instant response was not forthcoming and Leeds may have a moot point about the performance of referee P Tierney, who offered nothing in the way of protection towards marked-man Becchio. However we were effectively bullied out of the first-half by a physical Watford side and I do not mean that as a derogatory slur towards Sean Dyche's men. It was more annoying that we did not look like having the stomach for it! Whilst we have faltered and floundered around the play-off places, through hard work and determination then have crept up the table from the relegation zone. At times we were our own worst enemy. Save a Snodgrass mazy run and shot which just skimmed the Watford bar, we were over-reliant on the long ball and with Becchio and McCormack not even at the races, I thought our most likely source of a goal would come from Alex Bruce of all people who had a couple of headed attempts at the visitors goal. Aidy White, who was a doubt before kick off, failed to recover from a crunching first half challenge was replaced by half-time by Danny Webber. Webber does at least give us a little bit of much needed pace in our side and his runs down the left seemed to raise our hopes of getting back into the game as Leeds finally decided to show some fight. The turning point arguably was a double-save by Kuszcsak on 54 minutes, first denying Clayton and then Snodgrass - a minor criticism of the Scot was he chose to place the rebound rather than smash it in. Warnock threw on Nunez on 67 minutes and the little Honduran came close with a curling shot and was able to contribute to some neat, darting little surges towards the Watford box - but it was a poor, poor game. Connolly nearly created a Watford goal from a slip up, but Troy Deeney failed to cash in, Lonergan standing up to the Watford forward and Bruce clearing his lines. However on 84 minutes, it was all over, the power of Deeney and Iwelumo just too much for Leeds and despite Lonergan's best heroics, Iwelumo grabbed his second of the day. More misery was compounded when Connolly received a second yellow and like O'Dea and Adam Clayton will be missing for Good Friday's trip to Reading, who could top the Championship and undoubtably will if Leeds perform as shockingly bad as this again! Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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