LEEDS boss Gary McAllister singled out Sam Vokes for rich praise - even though the young striker took his share of the blame for Cherries' Elland Road defeat.

Vokes turned in another eye-catching display but also wasted a couple of gilt-edged chances as Cherries suffered a 2-0 reverse in West Yorkshire on Saturday.

And although McAllister hailed him as "excellent" and said he had "led the line fantastically well", the 18-year-old admitted to having a bad day at the office.

"I thought I should have had at least two goals," said Vokes. "I definitely had the best chance of the game. Sometimes they go in and sometimes they don't.

"I had the chances to get us the points but, unfortunately, it just didn't happen. The performance from the lads was brilliant and if we had taken our chances, we would have won.

"We had big spells in the game when we could have taken something from it but it wasn't to be. If we take the same attitude to Oldham, we can get the points there."

Cherries paid the price as goals either side of half-time from midfielders Bradley Johnson and Neil Kilkenny earned Leeds the points.

Johnson profited from a mistake by new loan goalkeeper David Forde to net an 11th-minute opener before Kilkenny doubled their lead midway through the second half.

Cherries boss Kevin Bond said: "I thought we did enough to win the game and it was only because we didn't finish that we didn't get the points.

"But it's difficult to be too critical of the lads because I thought they performed really well under the circumstances. We carved out chances but, unfortunately, didn't take them.

"Until they scored the second goal, they had had three chances, the first one being when the ball held up in the wind and caused confusion at the back.

"We gave away the ball inside our half for their second goal and we must have had half-a-dozen good chances to score.

"The performance was good. The centre-halves performed really well and Vokesy was a real handful throughout the game and probably would have had a hat-trick on another day.

"He's come on leaps and bounds and done really well. His end product wasn't as good as it has been in previous weeks and if it had, we wouldn't be bemoaning our luck."

Discussing Johnson's opener, when Forde came through the back of Neil Young and missed his punch, Bond added: "When the ball was first planted over the top, I thought it was going to go straight to him. Then, all of a sudden, it didn't make the edge of the area.

"I thought he performed really well apart from one crucial decision that led to the goal but it's difficult to be critical of him. Overall, we gave better than we got and must take heart from that."