Phil Hay's Inside Elland Road: Discipline penny has got to drop some time

That applies in turn to Samuel Saiz spitting at Robbie Willmott and there is something wrong if red cards of that nature need the aid of a club-wide drive on discipline.

There are few aspects of football which leave players to fend for themselves (some years ago now there was one at Leeds who missed a trip abroad because he assumed the club would make his passport appear at the airport) but spotting the difference between black and white is not much to expect.

Saiz took a six-game ban and paid £25,000 into the fund for Toby Nye. O’Kane took three games and spent Saturday’s defeat to Millwall in an LUTV studio. The pennies are surely dropping, in club fines aside from anything else, and they are lucky that Christiansen is not the reincarnation of John Sitton, fronting players up and offering them a fight in whichever corner of the car park they fancy.

The point about violent conduct is that football makes no allowance for it and barring an iron-fisted attitude, Christiansen cannot counter the aggressive impulse of players 50 yards away from him. He has no way of pre-empting fairly rare occurences either. Gaetano Berardi holds a deck of red cards but O’Kane’s against Ipswich was the first of his career after well over 200 professional games. Saiz was sent off twice in Spain, for the reserves of Atletico Madrid and Getafe, but had kept his nose clean for three years before Newport. There is an edge to Saiz and he takes yellow cards at twice the rate of Pablo Hernandez, United’s other number 10, but Hernandez is as benign as footballers get.

Six dismissals this season paints a disciplinary crisis at Elland Road but discipline is a catch-all phrase for offences which are not altogether comparable. The bigger problem for Christiansen is one of judgement and clarity of thought; the debatable offences which ask for trouble in circumstances where Leeds have enough on their hands. That recurring theme is hard to disguise and on Saturday it stared Christiansen in the face.

The club avoided contesting Liam Cooper’s first-half red card on the basis that his challenge on George Saville failed to touch the ball, his leading leg caught the Millwall midfielder and his studs were up as he followed through. There was some sympathy for Cooper too insofar as he attempted to flick the ball rather than lunge at Saville, the contact was less severe than Saville made it look, Millwall’s physio appeared to be treating the wrong leg and the scuffle which ensued between both benches inflamed the atmosphere.

David Coote, the match referee, seemed to reach for his yellow card at first but sent Cooper off after speaking with his nearest linesman and taking time to let the technical area settle down.

Earlier in the season, or with a clean disciplinary record, Leeds might have taken their chances with the Football Association’s appeals department but their run of red cards is creating some introspection at Elland Road.

Christiansen admitted before Saturday that he had a problem on his hands. Cooper spoke about it himself at a press conference on Friday, saying Leeds were under pressure to “sort it out and we will”. With time to consider his dismissal, thoughts at Leeds turned to the tackle that invited it.

Cooper’s brilliant reach to dispossess Nottingham Forest striker Ben Brereton with his heel on New Year’s Day was a risky intervention he had to make, at a moment when Brereton had Felix Wiedwald to beat. Fifteen yards inside Millwall’s half and with the ball beyond his control, diving in on Saville had no particular up-side.

Kalvin Phillips’ 85th-minute yellow card, taking him over the threshold for an automatic two-match ban, was comparable. Coote could have given him the benefit of the doubt for kicking the ball away after a foul near the halfway line. He could have seen Phillips’ offence as a split-second reaction by a tired player at the end of an exhausting game, and on another afternoon he might not have noticed it at all.

But with nine yellow cards on his record already and Millwall a long way from goal, Phillips exposed himself. The risk-verses-reward ratio should have made him think. If, as Christiansen says, Leeds are taking the rough end of the stick from officials then they were guilty on Saturday of lining up for a beating.

For United’s head coach, the resulting lack of continuity is sapping. Leeds’ dip to 10th place in the Championship is more than a reflection of a team who cannot keep 11 players on the pitch, and there are times when the predictability of Christiansen’s tactics would benefit from a shake, but at Hull City next Tuesday, suspension will leave him without his most creative attacker, his club captain, his most experienced midfielder and the player who has appeared in most Championship games for Leeds this season.

No fewer than four players are banned and it is not as if his side is blessed with the strongest of spines.

It was coming to something when the best thing Christiansen could say about Cooper’s red card on Saturday was that he hadn’t headbutted or spat at anyone but inadvertently, that touched on the main cause of his headache: wrong decision at the wrong times, in the wrong areas. The trend goes back to Cooper’s dismissal against Cardiff in September and to Ronaldo Vieira’s at Wolves the following month, and over time the trend looks like more than coincidence.

Headbutting and spitting is one thing, a flagrant loss of control. Bringing the general standard of decision-making into line is another, and a job for Christiansen’s management.