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Adam Baker writes

Posted Sunday, February 18th 2018 @AdamBakerBCFC

Johnson reflects on "fair" point at Leeds

Sunday, February 18th 2018

Lee Johnson says his players will learn from the cauldron-like atmosphere of Elland Road after being pegged back by Leeds United to draw 2-2.

For a second successive week, City let a lead slip to draw in the Sky Bet Championship, albeit this turnaround seemed different.

Bobby Reid and Famara Diédhiou both scored inside the opening 16 minutes as Johnson’s side enjoyed a dream start in West Yorkshire.

However, Pierre-Michel Lasogga and Kemar Roofe both scored in the final 18 minutes of the contest to earn a share of the spoils – and Lasoggo even hit the bar with the game’s last attack.

“On the whole I think it was a fair result,” Johnson told BCTV. “I thought we were excellent in the first half; very pragmatic and functional in our play.

“We played to our strengths, got in behind a few times and forced Leeds into a lot of errors.

“At half-time we spoke about doing more of the same and we did that for the first 15-20 minutes.

“When the goal came, sometimes those nerves set in, particularly because we’re in front of a big crowd and atmosphere at Leeds, and that’s where we have to improve as a side.

“We have to deal with that sort of environment and in the end we didn’t quite, even though we had opportunities to go 3-0 up before they came back.”

SILENCING THE HOME FANS

He continued: “Their fans had their grumbles and I was pleased because we had done that with our performance.

“It got to the point where we were so comfortable that their fans thought they may as well cheer in a positive light. They got the goal and football changes like that with momentum swings.”

With regards to surrendering back-to-back leads, Johnson acknowledged: “It’s obviously a flaw. You have to look at it as something to work on.

“I’m not going to chastise anybody because I thought there were so many good individual bits of play that went well.

“We had structure and were a lot more solid and at the end of the day we didn’t quite deal with the environment.

“We are work in progress, we’re definitely not the finished article and we have to use this as a lesson.

“There are positives. We’ve got a point at a really tough venue, in their manager’s first home game.

“In the league we’ve maintained our place in a play-off position with just 14 to play now. This was always going to be a difficult three games and it’s up to the players to respond again now and take Fulham all the way to the wire (on Wednesday).”