FA Carling Premiership
Game 12: Sunday 25 October 1999
Everton 4 - 4 Leeds United
(Half-time: 3 - 2)
Crowd: 37355
Referee: D Gallagher (Banbury)
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FA Carling Premiership Everton 4 - 4 Leeds United(Half-time: 3 - 2) |
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| « Lokomotiv Moscow | West Ham United » | |
| Match Facts | ||
|---|---|---|
| Teams | Unused Subs | |
| Leeds United | Martyn, Kelly, Woodgate, Radebe, Harte, Bowyer, Batty, McPhail, Kewell, Smith (Huckerby 68), Bridges | Hopkin, Haaland, Robinson, Mills |
| Everton | Gerrard, Ball (Johnson 79), Gough, Watson, Unsworth, Collins, Barmby, Campbell, Hutchison, Gemmill (Pembridge 28), Weir | Cadamarteri, Ward, Simonsen |
| Scorers | Other Info | |
| Leeds United | Bridges 15, 68, Kewell 35, Woodgate 72 | |
| Everton | Campbell 4, 28, Hutchison 37, Weir 90 | |
| Yellow Cards | Red Cards | |
| Leeds United | ||
| Everton | ||
| Match Statistics | ||
|---|---|---|
| Leeds United | Everton | |
| Corners won | ? | ? |
| Fouls committed | ? | ? |
| Hit woodwork | ? | ? |
| Offsides committed | ? | ? |
| Shirt numbers of goalscorers | 8, 10, 8, 6 | ? |
| Yellow cards | 0 | 0 |
| Red cards | 0 | 0 |
| Match Reports | |
|---|---|
| Fans' Reports | |
| Martyn Brown | View from Row J of the Upper Tier |
| Matt G | How many for a draw |
| Newspaper/Newswire/Net Reports | |
| The Guardian | Weir stems Leeds' run of victories |
| The Electronic Telegraph | Bridges tops bill in a thriller |
| The Times | Weir gives Everton fair share of the pickings |
| Express Sport | Everton 4 - 4 Leeds United |
| The Independent | Bridges in full flight as Leeds are denied |
| Yorkshire Evening Post | Tired United don't have legs for 11 |
| BBC | Weir denies Leeds at the death |
| Carlingnet | Everton 4 - 4 Leeds United |
Fantastic.
Kamikaze defending (Lucas again with a jekyl and hide performance) and *stunning* forward play resulted in one of the most open, end to end games since, err, Cov away.
3 times we went down and we always looked like winning it.
Defensively we were poor, especially lucas who was hammered by Campbell/Hutchinson, Woody managing slightly better - and Harte had an off day. But having said that, our midfield was a little lightweight since everyone was forward. Being attacking is great, but it does leave our midfield with a bit to do at times.
Amazing first half, pity we didnt level it, but smashing entertainment.
2nd half we shored up the defence a little (much improved) although Lucas was lucky with the Hutchinson incident, although from my view it looked clean :) And Kewell, Harte, Bridges, Bowyer and Huckerby all went close when they could have easily been goals. Bridges 2nd was sublime.
It was brilliant when we took the lead, but I kept saying to Nige Barber that 1 goal wasn't enough, we needed two - and we almost got it, it wasn't really a suprise when they levelled, it was just disappointing 1min into stoppage time (which there wasn't much of) and at the end of the day, probably a just result given Evertons contribution to the game which was end to end and attack-minded.
If I've any gripe it's that DOL didn't shut up shop with us winning 4-3 away from home with 3-4 mins to go. I'd have probably pulled Bridges & Bowyer off (who was knackered) and put Hopkin and Haaland on, to pack midfield and close them down. Still, no real reason to moan.
Scores;
Martyn - 7/10, good game but was nowhere for their equaliser
Kelly - 7/10, balances the team down the right, steady game
Harte - 6/10, not at his best, some poor distribution, unlucky not
to score from freekick
Woodgate - 6/10, good game against an in-form everton front 2
Radabe - 5/10, Improved in second half, but made some bad errors,
almost got sent off
Bowyer - 6/10, Looked tired, early knock slowed him down, not the
force of late
Batty - 7/10, Everywhere as usual, defensively a little mad
McPhail - 8/10, Best game in a leeds shirt, fantastic link up with
forwards, battled/tackled too
Kewell - 8/10, caused constant problems, incredible going forward,
unlucky with 2nd half effort
Bridges - 9/10, super display, fantastic touch, almost got his
hat-trick. Gorgeous 2nd.
Smith - 7/10, worked hard but eclipsed by the other two
Sub:
Huckerby (on for smith this time) - 7/10, caused all manner of
mayhem when he came on, created goals again.
Game - 9/10 fantastic entertainment
Ref - 9/10 Dermot Gallagher, excellent display (jeez, 2 good ref's
displays in a row)
Crowd - 7/10 good atmosphere/tit-for-tat chanting
Ground - 5/10 wooden pre-war dump, rat-infested terrace hovels
nearby.
Their fans - 5/10, part-timers, left when a goal down with *TEN*
minutes to go. Scallys.
Our fans - 7/10, so-so singing, we didn't fill all our seats
despite it being a sell out.
Beer - 2/10 (£1.80 for a can of chuffing Heiniken, which was
probably knicked)
Pasty - 3/10 god knows what was in it...
Nice to see when teams don't close us down, we usually score 4. :)
Everton - To be honest always one of the games when I look at the fixture list at the start of the season and thinking about skipping it. As it's a bloody long way, the away end has a shit view and we never seem to score there. Still couldn't miss the chance to see more history being made, so by 9.30 I was to be found standing by the side of the A14 in the pissing rain, waiting for the coach.
And the day started out as I feared, traffic jams as ever on the M6 round Birmingham, an enforced stop in Warrington to clear up child-propelled puke and a heaving pub at the ground full of the no surrender brigade. After wading through the puddles to the ground, things got worse. With the ball bobbing around harmlessly in midfield after a couple of minutes, I turned round to watch the commotion behind me as some latecomers looked for their seats, and a cheer from the other end told me Everton had scored.
Still we came back pretty strong, Gough and Watson were always going to struggle against our pace and movement upfront and it was soon apparent Kewell had Weir in a lot of trouble on the left. Sure enough the ball was played to Kewell out wide, he accelerated outside the defender and hit in a low cross which Smith missed but Bridges knocked in at the far post. Problem solved we thought, just a question of how many we'd score, we were playing neat football on the ground and Harte's delivery from corners was causing lots of problem as well. However, soon enough things went wrong again Campbell was put through at the other end and managed to beat Martyn.
Again we came back, Kewell again free on the left hit an early cross towards Bridges, Gerrard came out looking to intercept and watched the ball float over his head into the top corner. Unfortunately the celebrations were slightly marred by the Leeds Supporters Moron Branch behind us - who managed to knock over and trample most of our row, causing my first recorded injury watching football as someone trod on the back of my achilles. Before we had even sorted ourselves out properly Everton scored again, from the shit view we had it looked like a scrappy bundled in goal and the paper tells me Hutchinson scored it. At half-time the feeling was that we were likely to score more goals, it just depended on how many they ended up getting. They hadn't really looked that dangerous but somehow our defence had let them get three.
At the start of the 2nd half Everton had their best spell of the match and properly deserved to go further in front, Campbell seemed to have the beating of our defenders for pace and an indication of how badly things were going was that even Barnby looked dangerous. Probably a crucial moment happened when Radebe and Hutchinson chased a long through ball, Hutchinson went down and I wouldn't have been surprised if the ref had have given a free-kick and sent Lucas off - luckily he didn't and from then on we took control again.
The next goal was a gem, Kelly played the ball into Bridges and this time he managed to hit one of his loopy volleys over the keeper into the top corner a la Southampton. Forrest came on for Smith and we soon forced a corner - another good delivery from Harte and Woodgate glanced it in off the underside of the bar. This time the celebrations included a kick in the head for the bloke next to me from the muppets behind us.
Eighteen minutes left to hold onto the lead then. To be honest it didn't look like being a problem as we carried on cutting them apart down the left and should have scored at least one more. As we went into injury time we played the time wasting game by the corner flag and as usually happens in such circumstances lost the ball, Woodgate then committed a foul deep in our own half and there was a certain inevitability that Weir would head in the cross.
So a draw and the end of the winning run - we had enough chances to win more easily but the defence is letting in a worrying number of goals at the moment. So despite seeing such a brilliant game we were slightly deflated as we trudged through the rain back to the coach. That's now 3 8 goal games I've seen Leeds involved in (along with Sheff Wed and Eindhoven) and still haven't seen us win one - still others have seen 9 goal games (Stoke and Liverpool) and we haven't won those either.
That just left a nightmare journey home - an hour and a half after the game finished we were stuck in a never-ending traffic jam on the M6 and hadn't even got out of Cheshire. If we hadn't headed cross-country to the M1 I might still be on the M6 now. Still the journey gave us time to discuss plans for Moscow - apparently the Kremlin is closed on Thursday, which happens to be the day we are there - so we'll just have to settle for turning Red Square white.
The view was too crap to do proper scores but MoM was probably Kewell or Bridges.
Copy from Football Unlimited of 25/10/1999.
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It may be fashionable to dismiss the new Leeds United as a bunch of kids sustained by the potent combination of youthful exuberance and arrogance but to so do would be ungracious in the extreme. It may also be tempting fate.
If David O'Leary's team can add resilience to their other laudable qualities, they have a real chance of breaking up the cartel which has formed at the summit of the Premiership in recent seasons.
Leeds' magnificent club-record sequence of 10 wins may have ended on a grey afternoon but an extraordinary game, which yielded lavish, unrelenting entertainment, was deep into stoppage time when Everton applied one last brush stroke to a canvas which had been plastered with rich colours.
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