Rotherham United 2 Leeds United 1: Phil Hay's match report

A makeshift goalkeeper, with gloves thrown on hastily and a second shirt hanging out, was a good metaphor for the state and the season Leeds are in. They are coming up short across the board, returning with telling frequency to moments of harsh reckoning like Saturday’s.

They have a head coach whose performance has been no better or worse than several of his recent predecessors and who, it appears, is drawing offers of employment from elsewhere; from clubs who clearly think that Leeds and their owner, Massimo Cellino, will replace him in the summer. As of last Friday, they have no academy director and still no head of recruitment. And in amongst the peaks, their squad are prone to tripping landmines as they did at Rotherham United.

Rotherham’s 2-1 win on Saturday was almost impossible by the time a late penalty produced it. They were down to 10 men – reduced in numbers after Matt Derbyshire did to Gaetano Berardi what Leon Best had done to the right-back at Elland Road in November and split his head open – and barely willing to commit beyond halfway when a counter-attack in the penultimate minute yielded space and possession to Danny Ward.

Ward crossed, Bellusci tried and failed to clear with an overhead kick and United’s keeper, Marco Silvestri, took out Lee Frecklington four yards from goal. A red card followed and so did Bellusci’s cameo in net. All three substitutes had already been used.

“You make a cardinal sin defensively and you get punished,” said Evans, pointing the finger at Bellusci for failing to attack Ward’s cross with a header. “Not for one minute in that last 25 minutes did they think they’d get a goal. Not for one minute.

“But the crowd want their team to get a goal and when we make the mistake, they get a goal.”

Greg Halford stepped up, saw Bellusci flat-footed and poked the ball to his right. Rotherham felt safety come closer and reacted accordingly.

Evans, the former Rotherham boss, had happy days and nights at the New York Stadium, many of them, but Saturday was nightmare material in the plot that developed and the way the game ended. Having trailed to a first-half tap-in from Frecklington, he was right to say that Leeds should not have lost the game after Derbyshire’s 61st-minute dismissal or after Luke Murphy levelled the match with the help of a big deflection 11 minutes from time.

“In the second half we must have about 80 per cent possession, of which 80 per cent is in the Rotherham half,” Evans said. “Probably 70 per cent of it is in the last third. You would be right to say we didn’t pick people out with the final ball. But we didn’t lack anything apart from a big mistake.”

To a neutral eye it was less encouraging than that. Leeds saw plenty of the ball – endless amounts of it after the interval – but their approach play was languid, lacking adventure or invention until Derbyshire walked.