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The blip has well and truly started

The euphoria of beating the old enemy is always satisfying, but what price have Leeds paid overall?

leeds man u 7

Just 17 days ago, life couldn't have been any sweeter for a Leeds fan. Top of League One by 9 points with a game in hand; in the area final of the JPT and by 3pm we were the conquerors of Manchester United at Old Trafford.

But since Jermaine Beckford's 19th minute goal, the Elland Road club has taken a downward spiral.

The next league game produced a 1-1 home draw against second from bottom Wycombe. Followed by a 2-0 away defeat to Exeter, only the 2nd league defeat of the season for the table toppers.

And now last night in the JPT Northern Area final first leg at Elland Road, Leeds lost for only the 2nd time in a year at home when Carlisle won by 2 goals to 1.

Experienced midfielder Graham Kavanagh gave Carlisle the lead after 21 minutes and the Cumbrians held on to half time.

Leeds then levelled on 56 minutes with a rare goal from right back Jason Crowe when he headed home a cross from Andrew Hughes, a deserved reward for increased pressure.

leeds carlisle

And despite dominating the second half, Leeds missed numerous chances and were made to pay when substitute Joe Anyinsah with just 6 minutes to go put Carlisle back in front to take the advantage going into the second leg at Brunton Park in February.

With this means Leeds have noe gone 3 games without a win since that epic victory just over two weeks ago.

Why this has happened could be down to numerous reasons.

Many say that it's not jsut a case of after the lord mayor's show but that the players think they're now better than they are and think they can just walk out and win a game without trying.

But under the stewardship of Simon Grayson who has his feet firmly on the ground, I can't see this being the reason.

I think for the Wycombe draw, Leeds fans were willing to forgive as the players clearly showed tired legs after the Man Utd game.

But preparations for the Exeter game were next to perfect, flying down to Devon a couple of nights before hand with good training facilities. Fans at the game say the pitch was very heavy and some say unplayable. This is never an excuse for myself.

For the simple reason of we're in League One, pitches won't be perfect especially after the weather we've had, and if Exeter can get the result on the pitch, why can't we? If it ended 0-0 with hardly any opportunities then maybe the pitch could have be considered a factor as it clearly affected the match.

But we had chances and again were wasteful, Exeter got 2 goals. Simple as.

Against Carlisle last night although it sounded like we did play well and didn't get what we deserved, again we missed chances to kill the game off, and the changes to the team should still have had enough to see off the mid tabled Carlisle side.

Many see this as another reason for our failings, that we don't have strength in depth and maybe there is something in this, Grayson himself admitted this week that they were looking to bring in a couple of 'fresh' players and letting some go.

The situation surrounding striker Jermaine Beckford also hasn't helped.

Jermaine-Beckford-Leeds-United---_2374772

The club and player wanted to keep it secret to help keep the unity built up over the season between fans and players and staff. But his big mouth idiotic agent who clearly has the footballing know how of Llama, decided that he'd go on national radio and blurt out that Jermaine had indeed handed in a transfer request.

No doubt the work of his agent Nick Rubery who thinks that he would be swamped in offers. Guess what? He wasn't and so two weeks later tail between legs, Beckford (or should I say Rubery) withdraws the transfer request and agrees to stay at Elland Road until the end of the season.

Beckford citing the response of the fans at the Wycombe game as being a huge contributor and helping to get Leeds promoted. I know, we all know he loves it at Leeds. This is clearly the work of someone else.

Fans maybe so desperate for him to stay because he's the only one that can score regular goals. And fair enough he does, but in the past few games he hasn't. But not many Leeds players have, so to say he will be the only one getting goals is a bit of a weak argument.

Snodgrass, Becchio, Howson, Johnson and Kilkenny have all chipped in with goals over the season as well. So the mere fact that Beckford hasn't scored for a couple of games is irrelevant, all the above are capable of scoring, it just hasn't happened.

After the amazing start to the season, it was inevitable that a bad patch would come, Norwich and Charlton have had theirs and unfortunately it means our bad run has resulted in Norwich and Charlton being very close behind us. Norwich are just 3 points behind. But we do have a couple of games in hand.

All it need is a scrappy win to get the winning feeling back, maybe some fresh legs to come in a push us on and things will be back to how they were. It happens to all teams, even the top ones. ManUtd aren't exactly flying at the moment either.

Grayson has shown he is capable of picking us up from much lower positions to get us motivated and back on track, and with an upcoming FA cup tie away at Spurs on the horizon, it could be used to spur (bad pun) us on or affect us even more.

But we've still only lost two league games all season and are still top of the table. Still in with a shout of Wembley in the JPT northern final, have beaten Man Utd and face Tottenham next. As season's go, we can't complain really.