This looked like a good opportunity to put a few points between ourselves and the bottom three, but in the end we were relieved that we came back to earn a draw from this game with West Ham United.

The game was bookended with one arrival and one departure, with new signing Max Wöber being introduced to the crowd before the kick-off. There was also a minute's applause for recently deceased former West Ham chairman David Gold, in honour of his lifetime of service to the porn industry.

There were two changes to the starting line-up, with Roca back after being omitted from the trip to St James’ Park, and Summerville returning to the side after recovering from his recent injury problems. West Ham had lost their last five games, so I hoped they were there for the taking and that we could build on the excellent point we picked up at Newcastle.

But our start to the game was surprisingly lacklustre, and if anything the Hammers had the better of the opening 25 minutes. So they might have felt hard done by to fall behind to our first decent attack. Gnonto made one of his trademark runs through the middle and played a one-two with Summerville, before hitting an excellent shot first time into the corner of the net.

And he could have scored a second a few minutes later when another fine ball picked him out. He had time to take a touch to steady himself, but took it first time again and this time sent it over, perhaps getting a little over-confident. Aaronson also sent a shot over the bar, in his case from a corner.

But we started to get into a bit of a muddle whenever we need to play the ball out of defence. Meslier had to race out of his area to deal with one break, but could only clear as far as Coufal, about forty yards from goal. With our keeper well off his line there was an anxious moment for those of un the kop, as from our angle we couldn’t judge the flight of Coufal’s lob, but thankfully he had put a bit too much on it and the ball dropped onto the roof of the net.

And just when we thought we were going we get to half-time with a lead, the visitors were presented with a route back into the game. Struijk was a fraction too late as he made a challenge inside the box and Bowen went down rather easily. The ball went through to Fornals, who somehow managed to put the ball across the face of the goal rather than finding the net.

But the man in the VAR studio suggested that the referee went to the monitor to have another look at Struijk’s tackle, and the result was that he changed his mind and decided that it was a penalty after all. Paqueta produced one of those really annoying stuttering run-ups and it would have been hilarious if he’d put the ball wide, but sadly he didn’t.

I was hoping that Jesse would be able to gee his players up a bit for the second half, but instead we got another defensive howler which presented West Ham with the opportunity to take the lead. Aaronson’s was far too casual as he played a ball back to Roca, just as the Spaniard was heading in the other direction.

As Scamacca took possession he still had plenty to do, but his fiercely struck shot from 25 yards flew past Meslier and went in off the post. The visiting fans sang “how **** must you be, we’re winning away”, and at that point I found it hard to disagree.

After this setback our efforts to get back into the game weren’t helped by some inconsistent refereeing which started to wind up the crowd, with Cooper booked after seeming to win the ball. Summerville had been getting some rough treatment, and got wound up after one foul too many, racing over to plant his studs into Coufal’s shin.

Thankfully the referee settled for a yellow card, despite the whole of the West Ham bench doing their best to get him sent off. But Mr. Coote was less forgiving a few minutes later, waving a yellow card in Marsch’s direction after our head coach rightly pointed out that the visitors had taken a throw-in at least ten yards down the line from where the ball went out.

On 63 minutes Jesse made a double change. Aaronson’s head seemed to have dropped after his mistake led to the equaliser, and he might have thought Summerville needed a bit of protection after the earlier incident. On came Klich and Harrison, and both were to have a big impact on the game as Leeds finally woke up. David Moyes made a couple of changes of his own, which some of their fans have blamed for the way they lost their momentum late in the game.

Seven minutes later we grabbed the equaliser as Rodrigo picked up Harrison’s pass, before cutting inside and firing past Fabianski with a fierce shot. And the two combined again as Rodrigo was played through on goal, but this time the Polish keeper was able to tip the ball over the bar. Rodrigo would probably have scored if he had placed his shot to the side of the keeper instead of straight at him.

There were further chances to win the game, when Cooper had a header cleared off the line from a corner, then put the rebound over the bar. Gelhardt came on as the game went into injury time, though it seemed a little odd to take Gnonto off, as he had looked one of our major threats all evening.

There was a scare at the other end as a break ended with a ball across the face of goal that Antonio just failed to get on the end of. But we had the final effort of the game with another fine Fabianski save from Rodrigo, having to reach back to get to a shot that was actually behind him. So despite five minutes of injury time we failed to find a way to force a win, but could feel a little relieved that the outcome of the game was better than it might have been.

There followed an emotional send-off for Mateusz Klich, who was in tears as he took the applause of the crowd, with special t-shirts brought out for the rest of the team, who formed a guard of honour as he made his way down the tunnel one last time. But there have been some moans on social media that there was no prior announcement that this was going to happen, so many fans missed it as they had already left the stadium.

And so we end the Christmas and new year set of games in 14th place in a very congested bottom third of the table, only two points above the drop zone but with a game in hand on all the clubs around us. There should be enough poor teams below us for us to keep out of trouble, but we would have been a little more secure if we’d taken all three points from this game.

Reuters

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