Just when Leeds seemed to have taken a point from this eventful trip to Wolverhampton Wanderers, a late goal from Edwards secured a valuable win for the home side.

Neil Redfearn made three changes to his starting line-up, one of which was enforced, with Kalvin Phillips making his debut in place of the suspended Rudy Austin. Antenucci was back in place of Morison, despite the rumours about the clause in his contract, and the other changes saw Cooper replacing Beluscci.

The Leeds contingent in the crowd were certainly keen to give their backing to the head coach after the latest difficulties at the club, chanting “there’s only one Neil Redfearn” as the game got underway. The home side made the livelier start, but from nowhere Leeds took the lead in the eleventh minute.

Philips did well to close McDonald down in the corner, and we were lucky that his hurried clearance bounced of another Wolves player and fell kindly for Taylor. That said, it was still an excellent finish by Taylor for his first Leeds goal, as he calmly placed his shot beneath Ikeme’s dive. Unfortunately that proved to be the only opportunity we would get during the first half.

Wolves continued to enjoy most of the possession, and Silvestri was soon forced to make a decent save to keep out an effort from Sako. I briefly thought of the match at Boro (when we scored early and managed to keep the lead for the rest of the game thanks to our keeper’s brilliance) but my hopes of a repeat were dashed as early as the 19th minute.

A ball across the face of goal found it’s way through to Dicko, and although the Leeds defence had allowed him plenty of space, it still needed an excellent finish for him to score from a narrow angle. Wolves continued to overrun our midfield for the rest of the half, and some desperate tackling brought yellow cards for Byram and Wooton, with young Phillips lucky to avoid a similar punishment.

Silvestri made further saves to keep out several shots from Henry, but just when we seemed to have got to half time with the scores level, Dicko again found plenty of space behind the Leeds defence and beat Silvestri with a shot that crept just inside the near post. Our keeper might have been disappointed not to have got down to it, but it was a pretty fierce strike.

Just after the break Mowatt tested Ikeme with our first decent shot for a while, but only four minutes into the half Wolves went further in front. A shot from outside the box cannoned into one of Wolves own players, but it fell kindly for Afobe to score from close range. At that stage it looked as though Wolves would go on to win the game comfortably, but complacency set in and the pace of the home side’s performance began to drop.

And we were back into the game on 66th minutes when Batth had to stretch to cut out a dangerous ball into the area from Mowatt, but only succeeded in diverting it into his own net. Shortly afterwards I was holding my breath as Byram was summoned by the referee after another dangerous challenge, but the man in black settled for giving him a final warning rather than a second yellow.

It might have killed us off if we had gone down to ten men, but instead we equalised on 74 as Mowatt collected the ball on the right and was able to surge past a couple of defenders before hitting one of his trademark left foot shots from distance, leaving Ikeme with no chance. At that stage even a win seemed possible, and Billy Sharp had been warming up for a while, but when he came on Redfearn replaced Antenucci, rather than finishing with two strikers.

Maybe he thought a draw would be a good result, and certainly Wolves needed a win a lot more than we did. As time run out they put us under plenty of pressure, and we finally cracked two minutes from time, when Edwards was allowed to climb above our defence to score with a header from close range.

Four minutes injury time were played, but produced no further chances and we went down to our second defeat of the weekend. Certainly this was a spirited performance despite the latest distractions off the field, and we didn’t crumble as we could have done when the score got to 3-1, but we have to be disappointed with some of the defending.

Clearly the players and the fans still have confidence in Neil Redfearn, but does that matter to whoever is making the big decisions at our club?

Photo: Action Images

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