Leeds twice held a two goal lead in this game against Portsmouth, but went on to drop two valuable points through two unfortunate own goals from Andy O’Brien.

Simon Grayson decided to make two changes to his starting line-up, to give Becchio and Kilkenny a break over the busy Christmas schedule. If you’ve got a big squad of forwards and midfield players you might as well use it, so Paynter and Mc.Cormack came in to replace them.

Portsmouth could easily have scored in the first goal inside the first few minutes, but we can be thankful that one of their forwards shot wide when a ball across our goal found him unmarked. Instead, it was Leeds who took the lead in the seventh minute, when a cross from Connolly was knocked on by Paynter, and Gradel was on hand to score from inside the six yard box, completely untroubled by any challenges from the Portsmouth defence.

And three minutes later we were two in front, when we again broke away decisively. This time the goal came down the left side, with Mc.Cormack crossing the ball, and Snodgrass helping it on. Howson still had a lot to do, but he went past Mokoena and our former loan player Dickinson before hammering the ball past Ashdown.

Leeds were playing some great football, and we had our chances to go three in front, as Snodgrass tried his luck from distance but shot over the bar, and Paynter also fired over from a chance that should have been quite a bit easier. At this stage Leeds seemed to be heading for a comfortable victory, but Portsmouth pulled one back just after the half hour mark. Hughes played Nugent in, and when Collins stood off and gave his man space, Nugent accepted the invitation to hammer the ball across Schmeichel into the net, to bring Pompey back into the game.

Just before the break Snodgrass was close to restoring the two goal advantage with one of his trademark surges down the right and curling left foot shot, but this time it drifted just wide of the far post. But Leeds did make it 3-1 in the 62nd minute when Portsmouth could only clear a corner as far as Johnson, and Ashdown couldn’t hold onto his well-struck volley. But this time the two goal advantage lasted for only a minute, as Kanu cut the ball back to Hughes, and the shot took a big deflection off O’Brien to leave Schmeichel with no chance.

Shortly afterwards Grayson decided that Paynter was starting to run out of steam and decided to make his first substitution, replacing the former Swindon man with Becchio. Then Mc.Cormack was the victim of two contentious decisions. First he had a goal disallowed for a slight push on Ashdown after a corner, although to be fair the referee had just warned the players about pushing before the kick was taken. Then Mc.Cormack seemed to be brought down by Sonko, but the officials didn’t oblige.

Sam replaced Gradel for the last ten minutes, but Snodgrass was still our most dangerous player, and another fine run into the box ended with him shooting narrowly over the bar. Yet I always had the feeling this was going to be one of those days, and as time ran out Schmeichel had to save from Hughes and then clear a dodgy backpass from Johnson.

The anxiety got worse as five minutes of injury time were announced, and it was all too predictable that we would fail to hold out. And when the equaliser came it was horrendous, with Schmeichel and O’Brien managing to mess it up completely even though there was no Pompey player anywhere near them. The keeper came out for Citici’s cross, but O’Brien decided to deal with it himself and could only knock it past the great Dane into the empty net. Probably the misunderstanding was down to Schmeichel, who should have called to O’Brien in no uncertain terms that he was claiming the ball.

So it was an incredibly frustrating way to drop two points, in a game that we should have won comfortably well before half time. We would have gone back up to second if we had held on for the win, but instead we now find ourselves in fourth, behind the two south Wales giants on goal difference. We can’t keep on giving two goal leads away like this and we need to make our dominance count, starting with the new year’s day game against a struggling Middlesboro.

Photo: Action Images via Reuters