Garry Monk is of the opinion that Saturday’s match against Huddersfield Town signals the beginning of a pivotal period of the Championship season for Leeds — and the United boss has called for his charges to remain fully focused amid speculation regarding his own future at the club.

The Whites, who sit 21st in the table having been beaten 3-1 at Nottingham Forest in their last outing, are hoping to kickstart their season with a victory over Huddersfield tomorrow after a drab sequence of results in August.

“It’s an important period for us,” Monk told leedsunited.com. “We haven’t had many home games so far — we had a lot of away games last month — but it flips on its head this month.

“Five of our seven games last month were away; this time we’ve got five of our next seven at home.

"We really want to utilise that and get our season started at Elland Road. We know the crowd is going to be really passionate in giving their support for the boys.

“We want to put a display on which gets them going and derbies are always good games.

“I understand all of that but really I’m just focusing on the players and their jobs for Saturday. I’m trying to get three points and we’re focusing on that.

“We want to let all of those other outside influences take care of themselves, but we’ll do that by putting a performance on the pitch and that’s what we’re looking to do.

When quizzed on what he made of the recent international break, Monk added: “It’s been good to have a period working with the team, which you don’t often get as the season is going on because of the amount of games.

“There isn’t usually a lot of time between games to really have full preparations in terms of our time on the grass with the players — it’s really about recovery in those periods.

“It was good to have two full weeks of good work, trying to improve the ideas that we have and also putting some good physical work in.

"The players did very well and took everything on board.

“We feel like we’ve taken another step forward in our improvement and we want to try and show that in the games coming up.

“Some of the players have had more time at the club with myself than others in terms of working on new ideas, so it’s really about getting those other guys up to speed as much as possible.

“Then it’s about going into this next period of games with a really positive attitude and focus on trying to get some good results.

“It’s been good to have a prolonged period working with the players to really drum things into them. Their attitude towards it has been brilliant and we’re looking for a reaction now — a show of our improvement.

“We want to keep doing the things that we’ve been doing well and then look at our mistakes and try to correct and cancel them out of our game.

"Slowly but surely, I think we’re improving. We’ve had setbacks and we’ve had improvements along the way — what we want is to find that consistency.

“We spoke to the group about our consistency levels during the international break. We know what we’re capable of — we just have to make sure we do it on a consistent basis. That’s what our focus is on.”

Leeds host Huddersfield, a side who have accumulated 13 points so far this term, in a three o'clock kick-off at Elland Road tomorrow. A midweek clash against Blackburn at Elland Road will follow on Tuesday night, before the Whites travel to Wales to take the fight to Cardiff City away from home.

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