HAVING contributed financially to the club’s fight for survival, the Leeds players had nothing else to offer as another abject performance left them rooted to the bottom of the table, strengthening the belief that if a suitable buyer is finally found for the troubled Yorkshire club they will be investing in a First Division team.

Any glimmer of hope provided by the raising of enough capital — including the players’ belated decision to defer 25% of their wages until the end of the season — to find a further week’s favour with the club’s major creditors was washed away on another depressing afternoon in which Leeds’s threadbare playing credentials were starkly laid out for all to see.

A fifth straight League defeat was not confirmed until Joseph-Desire Job scored Middlesbrough’s second goal 13 minutes from the end, but in truth Leeds had never looked like halting their slump and finished with the appearance of a side resigned to their fate, with Paul Robinson’s unfortunate dismissal for up-ending Michael Ricketts a minute from the end summing up their predicament.

“It was very disappointing. I expected a bit more,” admitted Leeds manager Eddie Gray.

“It’s a difficult situation for the players but they have got to show the courage to go out and play. We can keep making excuses but when they get out there they’ve got to perform for 90 minutes and they did not do that. If we perform like that we will not get out of trouble.

“No disrespect to Middlesbrough but, although they played well, we made it easy for them and they won the game comfortably.

“It’s now becoming very difficult for us, although it’s always been difficult, but the games are running out.”

Leeds did not muster a single worthwhile effort on goal, yet remarkably it took Middlesbrough until the second half to make their superiority count. But even a team which had won only once in the League since the end of November could not fail to collect maximum points as they romped through the disorganised Leeds ranks with embarrassing ease to register their most comprehensive victory of the season.

“It was the complete performance: good defending, a clean sheet and an end-product,” said Middlesbrough manager Steve McClaren.

“We got three goals and could have had more. We have lost only three of our last 19 games — two of those to Arsenal and one to Manchester United — but we needed to start winning.”

McClaren’s decision not to include on-loan Leeds defender Danny Mills in his side never threatened to be an issue, with the only irritant to Middlesbrough being their ongoing struggle to score goals.

For all the movement and guile of Juninho, Gaizka Mendieta and Boudewijn Zenden, Robinson’s only employment of the first half was a fine double save to deny Mendieta and then Juninho.

However, Leeds’s bedraggled side could only hold out for so long, and eight minutes after the break Massimo Maccarone played in Zenden for the on-loan Chelsea winger to slide home an angled shot from 12 yards out.

Mendieta should have put Leeds out of their misery shortly afterwards but missed the target from Zenden’s pass and it was left to Job, just three minutes after coming on as a substitute, to effectively finish the job when he profited from Juninho’s lovely dummy to run unhindered from the halfway line and round Robinson to score.

The goalkeeper is one of Leeds’s few remaining major assets, on and off the pitch, but he will now have to serve a suspension, as referee Graham Poll exercised the letter of the law when showing him a red card for his trip on Ricketts, who picked himself up to beat substitute Scott Carson from the penalty spot a minute from the end.

Leeds United: Robinson, Kelly, Harte, Duberry, Kilgallon, Pennant, Bakke (Morris 79min), Johnson (Bridges 67min), Milner (Carson 89min), Matteo, Smith

Middlesbrough: Schwarzer, Davies (Parnaby 53min), Queudrue, Riggott, Southgate, Boateng, Mendieta, Zenden, Maccarone (Job 74min), Doriva, Juninho (Ricketts 85min)

Scorers: Middlesbrough: Zenden 53, Job 77, Ricketts 89 (pen) Referee: G Poll

Attendance: 29,513

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