“COME ON LUCAS, HACK IT into your own net!” a local newspaper reporter shouted as Leeds United’s otherwise impressive defender sliced a clearance in the eightieth minute of this thoroughly wretched game. “I need to write another 400 words — please, something happen.” The poor chap was close to tears. The rest of us were merely rather irritated that our gentle slumber had been disturbed.

The first half had threatened to provide a smidgen of entertainment from time to time, with Harry Kewell and the unusually vigorous Mark Viduka promising a little but inevitably failing to deliver, but the only — and I mean only — notable incident of the second half was the 74th-minute dismissal by Uriah Rennie, the referee, of Andy Johnson, West Bromwich Albion’s combative midfield player, for garnering a second yellow card for foul and abusive language after a penalty claim was ignored.

Gary Megson, the West Bromwich manager, alluding only in the most opaque fashion to Johnson’s epithets of choice, said: “Uriah says he was called something and if he’s right and he heard right then Andy has no defence and he deserved to be sent off. We are talking about swearwords and you cannot call referees what he apparently said, but Andy says he didn’t use those words.” So that’s that cleared up, then.

After a rather fraught week it is to be assumed that Terry Venables, the Leeds manager, quite enjoyed the peace and quiet of this otherwise uneventful match. In a final, fruitless, attempt to shake the game into life, he even gave Robbie Fowler, fresh from the fun on Moss Side, ten minutes or so to run around quite slowly and miss what was ostensibly the best chance of the game — luckily for Fowler, he was adjudged to be offside.

Both managers were surprisingly pleased with a result that has done neither of them any favours. Venables chirpily asserted: “If we had done that four or five times earlier this season, just keeping our cool and keeping it tight in the last ten minutes, we would have been at least four or five points better off.”

Megson, whose team remain at the bottom of the Premiership, was slightly more philosophical. “When a game goes like that you have to decide whether the glass is half-empty or half-full.” Believe me, Gary, the glass was empty. And there was a spider at the bottom.

Leeds United (4-3-3): P Robinson 6 — G Kelly 5, L Radebe 7, D Matteo 5, T Lucic 5 — J Wilcox 4 (sub: J Milner, 69min 4), P Okon 3 (sub: R Fowler, 79), E Bakke 4 (sub: S Johnson, 69 4) — A Smith 5, H Kewell 4, M Viduka 6. Substitutes not used: N Martyn, D Mills. Booked: Smith. NEXT: Chelsea (a). FORM: DLWWWD

West Bromwich Albion (3-5-2): R Hoult 7 — S Gregan 6, D Moore 7, P Gilchrist 6 — I Balis 4 (sub: R Wallwork, 35 6), D McInnes 6, A Johnson 6, J Koumas 6 (sub: L Sigurdsson, 77), N Clement 3 — D Dichio 4, S Dobie 2 (sub: L Hughes, 63 4). Substitutes not used: J Murphy, I Udeze. Booked: Johnson. Sent off: Johnson. NEXT: Charlton Athletic (h). FORM: DLLLDL