Peter Ridsdale asked the Council for a further six months to ensure that a new retailer was brought on board. The Council were only prepared to give a “Final” three month extension as the (mistaken!) feeling grew that, one way or another, we were coming to the end of a long and tortuous road. The other bit of stadium news this month was that the City's planned “Rolls Royce“ of a stadium would be now akin to a Ford Cortina as problems with getting the sums to add up forced the club to make cut backs on the original specification.
On the pitch City went into December with a trip to Hull's KC Stadium. Darren Purse made a temporary return to action as the team faced a Hull outfit who were clear of the bottom three but not far enough away to prevent anxious looks over the shoulder at what was happening below them. City were generally considered to be edging a poor encounter when, in the sixty eighth minute, referee Taylor showed Darren Purse a second yellow card for a foul on Fagan. Dave Jones immediately brought on Neil Cox to replace Paul Parry in a bid to shore up the defence, but within two minutes, the substitute and Chris Barker were caught out on the touchline by Fagan and his cross was turned home from close range by Paynter with Neil Alexander in a poor position to deal with the situation. Once behind, ten man City were always a sucker for a counter attack and that came with two minutes left when Fagan scored on the break.
A 2-0 defeat did not bode well for the following weekends trip back to Yorkshire to face promotion chasing Leeds at Elland Road. As it was though, City, watched by a tiny away support following the Rams decision to boycott the latest in a long line of “bubble” trips, and with Neil Cox replacing the suspended Purse, turned in a performance rated by their manager as their best of the campaign to gain a hugely impressive 1-0 win. City's victory was no fluke either as Dave Jones scored a tactical triumph over Leeds counterpart Kevin Blackwell by bringing in the fit again Kevin Cooper for Ricketts and deploying a 4-5-1 formation which completely caught the home side on the hop.
Teams using the 4-5-1 formation are often accused of playing boring, negative football, but that wasn't the case here as City spent most of the first half attacking and a half chance missed by Ledley and a header on to the bar by Loovens offered pointers to the fact a goal was coming when Koumas, who was terrific on the day, curled a twenty five yard free kick beyond Sullivan and into the net on 31 minutes.
The second half saw Leeds finally begin to assert themselves, but their increasingly desperate attacks were easily repelled by a City side that gave the impression that they could maybe get another goal on the break as Cameron Jerome took to the lone attacker role with impressive comfort. However, there was no more scoring and Dave Jones was able to reflect on a job very well done in his post match press conference - it has to be said though that subsequent use of the 4-5-1 formation proved to be far less successful with points or even goals being conspicuous by their absence!
I believe the win at Leeds finally convinced those doubters amongst our support that we had a team capable of not only surviving but prospering in this division, they had established themselves as a hard working and resilient outfit which, if lacking real quality throughout, did contain an attacking midfielder (Koumas) who was generally considered to be the best player of his type in the Championship and a powerful young striker (Jerome) who defenders at this level found almost impossible to deal with when he was on his game - perhaps for the first time, people started to dream of Premiership football in 2006/07!
However, hindsight shows that the Leeds win was to prove something of a high water mark in the season for City as they were never quite able to grasp the opportunity offered by the promising position they found themselves in - Koumas' brilliance was still always capable of turning a game, but Jerome's influence gradually waned as the season went on and the team were never able to go on that winning run that all promotion or play off sides need to at some time during a season. As to why that should be, well my opinion is that the consequences of running with such a small squad began to bite. City had been able to grind out wins in tight matches through sheer force of will in the first half of the season when their fitness levels were probably as high as their opponents, but now the effects of continuously playing two games a week over a four month period began to bite on some players who weren't fit to the extent that they were putting off operations, were playing with injuries and others who were just in need of a rest. However, the lack of adequate replacements at the club meant that Dave Jones had to soldier on with what he had and, consequently, a team which was never blessed with great pace or movement found itself struggling even more in these departments as the season progressed.
City's last match before a Christmas holiday period which would see them play four matches in eight days was at home to a Derby side struggling near the bottom after being in the play offs the previous season. The visitors were the latest team to come to Ninian Park with a defensive approach and City, with Purse back in for the unlucky Cox, laboured throughout to break them down - some of Derby's defending had a desperate last ditch quality to it and they had to rely on some good saves by keeper Camp, but they achieved their objective in getting a point from a 0-0 draw which was a frustration for City and a decent sized pre Christmas crowd of 12,500 (or thereabouts!).
In the days before Christmas attention shifted back to the new ground scheme. Former City director Paul Guy and ex Wales rugby International Mike Hall had recently entered the fray as their company PMG Developments appeared to take an active part in proceedings through an offshoot company called Capitol and Regional (Leckwith) and this lead to a feeling that, at long last , things could be on the move. On 22 December this statement (http://tinyurl.co.uk/cko8) appeared on the club's website and the following day this story (http://tinyurl.co.uk/dkrp) appeared in the Western Mail carrying details of the club's insistence that a second retailer would be signed up to the development by the end of the first week in January.