The midweek win over Blackpool has given us a bit of a lift, but if we’re to have any chance of making the play-offs we can’t afford to slip up at Blackburn Rovers tomorrow.

When Neil Warnock spoke to the official site he was full of praise for the way his team played on Wednesday night. "It was a complete performance, even though Paddy Kenny pulled off two world class saves. It was from one to 11, everybody had a great work ethic but there was quality football as well. So it was nice to see the performance and right result.

And Ross McCormack is insisting that we’ve still got a chance of reaching the top six. “We've got one game in-hand and six points off the Play-Offs, anything is possible. The day you stop believing is the day you shouldn't be a footballer, we've got a good group of lads that want to work hard and we believe that we can do it."

The good news is that the game in hand is at home to Peterborough, but the bad news is that we’ve effectively got to make up a gap of seven points because of a terrible goal difference. Leeds will have no new injury problems and Warnock is likely to stick with the same starting eleven who began the Blackpool game, so Brown and Diouf will again have to make do with places on the bench.

Blackburn have endured a roller-coaster season but are now only one point behind Leeds and they still have their own hopes of reaching the play-offs. At the start of the season their owners Venky’s seemed to be keeping faith with much-maligned manager Steve Kean, only to sack him when they had actually made a reasonable start to the campaign, with four wins from their first five league games.

Next they endured a hopeless spell under Henning Berg, who never seemed to have the faintest idea what he was doing, and it’s no surprise that they plunged down the table when he was in charge. But their fortunes have improved once he was replaced by Michael Appleton in the new year, and Tuesday night’s defeat by high-flying Hull was their first in seven games.

They still have some well known players left over from their spell in the Premiership in the shape of David Dunn,, Morten Gamst Pedersen and good old Paul Robinson, so if they get their act together they should be equipped to make a late surge up the table. But their biggest threat is striker Jordan Rhodes, who they bought from Huddersfield for £8 Million at the start of the season, so Leeds will have to make sure we keep him quiet.

Blackburn are expecting their largest attendance this season (we’re not famous any more!) and as they think they might get out-shouted they have been asking their fans to try to match our level of vocal support. On their official site Appleton said " If our fans do get behind the players I'm sure they'll respond to that and we'll get a good performance from them”.

On the field the Blackburn boss has a couple of injury problems to sort out and he is running out of midfield players. Lee Williamson will be out for up to six weeks with an ankle injury, and Dickson Etuho suffered a recurrence of his knee problems when he attempted a comeback in the reserves on Monday. But on the other hand right-back Adam Henley came through the same reserve game unscathed and he might be able to make a return.

There’s no doubt this will be a difficult game for Leeds, but we need to take at least a point from it. And I think we will get it, as my prediction is going to be a 1-1 draw.

Photo: Action Images

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