Leeds United suffered their second Championship defeat of the season as they lost 3-1 to Cardiff City.
Thomas Christiansen
Unlike their two previous games at Cardiff, Leeds will probably not want to remember anything about their most recent trip to the Welsh capital as a calamitous first-half for the Whites put Neil Warnock’s men well on their way to a win that saw the Bluebirds replace Leeds at the top of the Championship table.
Cardiff went into the break 2-0 ahead and to add insult to injury, Thomas Christiansen’s men were reduced to 10 men shortly before the interval as Liam Cooper was shown two yellow cards.
Leeds endured a miserable first-half
Given how the first-half played out, some Leeds fans may have feared that the objective for the second-half would have simply been to keep the scoreline down – but the Whites actually started after the break with the kind of impetus they struggled to show in the first-half.
And Leeds created a golden chance right at the start of the half as a lovely move led to full-back Gaetano Berardi – who is yet to score a goal during his professional career – being the surprise face who was through on goal.
Berardi’s effort was saved from Cardiff goalkeeper Neil Etheridge, but perhaps the photo below perfectly highlights how a different decision from the Swiss defender could have changed the complexion of the game.
Did Leeds come within one pass off changing game against Cardiff as Gaetano Berardi shoots while his teammates look on with an empty net in front of them?
Though Berardi had a split-second to make a decision on whether to shoot or not, had he been able to get his head up, he would have noticed that he had two teammates, including Kemar Roofe, alongside him with virtually an empty net to put the ball into.
Passing the ball to one of them could have made the scoreline 2-1 and given Leeds the momentum to perhaps search for an equaliser despite their disadvantage of being a man down.
And the missed chance would prove costly as Cardiff would make the score 3-0 just before the hour-mark, meaning that when Roofe did get on the scoresheet, the game was virtually over and Leeds’ hopes of maintaining their place at the summit heading into Sunday’s game against Sheffield Wednesday were already dashed.
But perhaps it could have been different had Berardi made the pass across the box instead of having a shot.
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