Can Leeds handle pressure this time?
No VAR, so Wells winner is latest blow
NOBODY needs t o explain to Leeds United t he differences between the Premier League and the Championship.
The 16 years the Yorkshire club have spent away from the top-flight must have felt like a lifetime.
One difference — aside from power, money and prestige — is that goals such as Nahki Wells’ here for Queens Park Rangers would simply have been disallowed in the top division.
Certainly it would have been chalked off this season after the tightening up of the handball laws. After all, when goals like that scored by West Ham’s Declan Rice at Sheffield United are cancelled for the merest hint of handball, Wells’ double handling before scoring would not have stood a chance.
So Leeds were left fuming as the ball brushed Wells’s left arm and then stuck his right elbow in the act of settling this spicy contest. But VAR is not in the Championship so they had to put up and shut up.
It was yet more misery in London for the promotion chasers. Leeds have lost on their last six visits to the capital and won just once in 19.
Injustice aside, they had themselves to blame, with Patrick Bamford’s second- half penalty saved by Liam Kelly and a host of other chances going begging.
An ignominious afternoon was completed two minutes from time when Kalvin Phillips was shown a straight red card for an awful lunge on Geoff Cameron.
After stumbling in recent weeks, Marcelo Bielsa’s side now feel the breath of Brentford, Fulham and others on their necks. The promotion place that seemed theirs to keep along with West Bromwich Albion is very much up for grabs.
‘In football you have a lot of situations you cannot manage,’ said Bielsa of Wells’ handball. ‘Sometimes those kind of situations damage one team or they go in your favour. Everything you can imagine in one match was against us.’
QPR won a free-kick on the edge of the Leeds box and Ebere Eze’s delivery struck Luke Ayling, then ricocheted into Wells’ path via both of his arms for the only goal.
Leeds appealed vociferously but in vain, with Wells saying afterwards: ‘I think it hit my hand but not intentionally and sometimes you need that bit of luck.’
There was a slight controversy about the Leeds penalty as well, with Bamford appearing to move his leg towards goalkeeper Kelly to draw the foul. Kelly atoned in any case, diving low to his left to repel Bamford’s spot-kick.
Pablo Hernandez struck a post with a late free-kick and Bamford wasted a couple of opportunities as Leeds tried to snatch a point.
The way Bielsa seemed to lament losing Eddie Nketiah, recalled by Arsenal from his Elland Road loan, showed a man bemoaning the lack of a clinical goal touch in his side.
‘We deserved to be in the lead at half- time,’ said QPR boss Mark Warburton. ‘We invited pressure and rode our luck a bit in the second but stood up to them.’