Our unbeaten run came to an end with defeat by Cardiff City last night, against the opposition who were also the last team to beat us, back in October.

There were two changes to the starting line-up for this game, with a welcome return for Ben Parker as he made his latest comeback from injury, and Paynter replacing Becchio as the Argentinian was rested once again. Somma didn’t even make the bench, which is a bit bizzare considering the excellent form he produced earlier in the campaign.

For much of the first half Cardiff gave Leeds a torrid time, and they deservedly took the lead after eleven  minutes.  Bellany played a neat one-two with Whittingham, and as the Leeds defence stood off he accepted the invitation to knock the ball between Schmeichel’s legs.  And Cardiff kept up the pressure on the Leeds goal, with our Danish custodian having to make saves from Burke, Bellamy and Whittingham as the home side’s pace and movement continued to trouble the Leeds defence.

It wasn’t until the final ten minutes of the first half that Leeds managed to break out of our own penalty area for any length of time, and our first decent attempt of the night saw Paynter heading just over from a corner. But Cardiff again forced Leeds onto the back foot at the start of the second half, and after an hour Grayson decided he needed to change things round to try to get Leeds back into the game.

Sam and Watt came on for Gradel and Mc.Cormack, and immediately these two were involved, as  Watt’s run created space for Sam, who forced Heaton into a fine save. But the Cardiff keeper stood no chance a minute later as Snodgrass hit an excellent shot from distance to bring Leeds level. At this stage it looked as though Leeds could go on to win it, with Parker being the next Leeds player to test Heaton, but we lost a bit of momentum when Sam had to limp off to be replaced by Becchio.

And it was Cardiff who were to snatch the winning goal thanks to some more of our trademark poor defending, as we were caught out by simple long ball over the top and Chopra was able to run through and smash the ball past Schmeichel. Leeds pressed hard for an equaliser as time ran out, but Becchio wasted our best opportunity by heading wide when he should have done better. The final whistle brought an end to Cardiff’s poor run and kept Dave Jones in employment for a few more weeks, while Simon Grayson was left to complain about yet more poor defending from his side.

So a disappointing holiday period came to an end, with a return of only three points from the four games seeing Leeds slip back to fifth in the table.  Let’s hope it’s an omen that the next league game is against Scunthorpe, the team that we beat in October to start the unbeaten run in the first place.

Photo: Action Images via Reuters