WHEN KEN BATES BECAME CHAIRMAN at Elland Road, the rumour mill murmured that he might replace his manager, Kevin Blackwell, with Dennis Wise, the Millwall player-manager. Leeds United’s recent results have been good enough to quell any such notion and yesterday Blackwell was even relaxed enough to crack a joke: “The first time we met I looked him in the eye and said: ‘Look Mr Bates, I’m prepared to give you a chance’.”

Now the spotlight is on Wise’s future. Jeff Burnige replaces Theo Paphitis as Millwall chairman in the summer and speculation has surfaced that Wise will depart in the closeseason. Either the 38-year-old is unsure of his future, or he knows but is not telling. “It’s been a difficult time between me and the new chairman. I do know the way he wants to go and that’s up to him,” Wise said, cryptically. “There are situations you get disappointed with. I never walk away from anything. If he gets rid of me that’s fair enough, that’s his choice.”

After this draw, both sides are three points off the Coca-Cola Championship play-off places. Evidently this is not enough to satisfy the more demanding sections of Millwall’s support, but Leeds — given their sharp decline, on the face of it a club with more to be despondent about — are delighted to have acclimatised to the division so quickly. “Our form since November would have seen us second in the table,” Blackwell said. “We have come a long way. It takes time to evolve and it’s an evolutionary period rather than a revolutionary period.”

Given Millwall’s indifferent results in 2005 it is surprising that they are still in with such a loud shout of a top-six finish. They have only won twice in ten league matches and have not scored two goals in a match since beating Nottingham Forest on January 15. Their previous five fixtures before yesterday’s had all finished 1-0 or goalless.

Scoring difficulties will hardly be eased by the sale of Scott Dobie, the striker, to Forest ten days ago and there are rumours that more players will depart to improve the bank balance, though the return from injury of Bob Peeters, a late substitute who made his first appearance since November 2003 yesterday, was one reason for Wise to feel encouraged. Another was the solid performance of his inexperienced side.

“I’m very proud of the young lads, they did very well,” Wise said. He called for a more sympathetic response from the crowd. “These youngsters don’t know the game yet but they work (hard),” he said. Wise even ventured into the crowd at half-time to remonstrate with two malcontents. “There’s a couple of blokes who always seem to give us stick,” Wise explained. “I said: ‘Get behind them. We’ve got a load of kids out there and they need your support.’ It’s no good people slaughtering them.”

The army of riot police, barking police dogs and braying Leeds fans that pockmarked London Bridge station before the match underlined that this was a fixture with a serrated edge. If the apparent need for a vast police presence was depressing, at least the match was entertaining, even though neither side was quite sharp enough to carve out a winner.

Paul Robinson, the 23-year-old recalled from a loan spell at Torquay United because of Millwall’s injury problems, gave the home side the lead after 17 minutes. Mark Quigley controlled Peter Sweeney’s corner on the edge of the six-yard box and mis-hit his shot across the face of goal, and the defender was in the right place to poke it in. It was Millwall’s first goal from open play since they met Forest.

Gary Kelly’s bristling long-range effort two minutes after the break, superbly saved by Andy Marshall, suggested that Leeds would be a more potent proposition in the second half and so it proved. Aided by a noisy atmosphere, this became an exciting, attack-minded contest. Leeds secured the point their greater second-half ambition merited when Rob Hulse was allowed enough space to turn by Matt Lawrence, the defender, before drilling in the equaliser.