David Prutton: A blend of '˜nice' and '˜nasty' can lift Leeds United

Because there’s also the sharper focus with Sunday’s game against Middlesbrough with regards to them taking on Garry Monk.

Any manager is judged by the players that are brought in and in term of filling the gaps with the players that have gone, Leeds started the season well enough to put all that behind them. But the loss of form across the playing staff and then not getting results, shows this is just as tough a job as it always has been.

With Middlesbrough, I think now we are looking at them perhaps where we presumed they would be.

After being relegated they have spent money on the team both in terms of keeping key players and signing new ones like Britt Assombalonga.

Perhaps they just needed to find a way of getting through games and winning slightly uglier and scrapping through games which they have now managed to do.

Coming into Christmas, they have now positioned themselves very well.

If you take into account how vociferous the Leeds supporters will be with regards to Garry, Sunday’s match has got all the ingredients of a very, very intense game with a lot of feeling and emotion.

You can put the house on the fact that Garry will definitely want to go to Elland Road and win.

What can Thomas do differently?

Firstly he needs his side to cut down the defensive errors and mistakes. Andy Lonergan is a very accomplished goalkeeper and very rarely will he make mistakes like he did at Brentford.

But the cross that he missed was just completely nonsensical. It was just rash.