WE MUST STOP BEING ‘DIRTY LEEDS’ AGAIN!

THEY might not like it, but Leeds United will struggle to deny that the old ‘Dirty Leeds’ moniker is undeserved given their recent disciplinary troubles. Liam Cooper’s red card against Millwall was Leeds’s third in three games and sixth of the season. Such recklessness means that Thomas Christiansen’s side — without a win since Boxing Day — will head into their match at Hull City in eight days’ time without four suspended players. Having been sent off twice this season, Cooper now faces a four-match ban while Samuel Saiz and Eunan O’Kane are in the midst of six and threegame suspensions respectively. Kalvin Phillips also picked up his 10th booking in the topsy-turvy defeat by Millwall, meaning he too will sit out the trip to Hull and the crunch match with Cardiff that follows. In a bid to reverse a run of results that threatens to derail their push for the play-offs, Christiansen will spend a training week in Spain focused on keeping a full complement of players on the pitch. ‘The discipline will take up a lot of time,’ he said. ‘We cannot afford to lose our possibility to do something good in this league through red cards. That must stop now. I don’t believe we are judged in the same way [as other teams], but there is nothing we can do. In the Championship you cannot afford to play with one less.’ Cooper’s red card for a late challenge on George Saville in the 38th minute threatened to see Leeds embarrassed by Neil Harris’s team after a lacklustre first-half showing. But two goals from PierreMichel Lasogga and a Kemar Roofe effort saw Leeds turn round the two-goal half-time deficit inside 17 minutes in the second half. The 10 men were unable to hang on, though, as the disappointment of conceding an 87th-minute equaliser to Tom Elliott was compounded by Jed Wallace’s deflected winner in stoppage time. Victory for Millwall was particularly sweet for former Leeds forward Steve Morison, who laid on two goals to help his side to a first away win of the season. ‘That game underlined our frailties and shows an area where we have to massively improve,’ he said.