Neil Warnock has called on his players to make up for last week’s poor show at Derby County, but he knows it won’t be easy against an improving Ipswich Town.

Warnock was understandably disappointed that we produced such a poor performance at Derby after winning the three previous games. Apart from a spell either side of half time Leeds were over-run in midfield and Warnock told the official site “The frustration for me about Derby was that a team could play like they did and still beat us. It wasn’t a special performance from them. We need to put that right.”

And Tom Lees also admitted it was below par when he spoke to the Yorkshire Post “We never got going and that’s massively disappointing. It’s not good enough when you’re aiming to go what we want to do this season. The performance came out of nowhere in terms of the fact that we’d been playing well and training well in the week leading up to the game and I couldn’t really see what we did differently. But we as players should look at ourselves”.

Warnock knows that we can’t afford to have too many more games like that if we’re going to make up lost ground on the top six, but he also warned that tomorrow’s game will a lot more difficult than it would have been if we’d played Ipswich at the start of the season, as the Tractor Boys have pulled away from the relegation zone with some impressive recent results.

They were rock bottom of the table when Paul Jewel was sacked at the end of October (and given the backing their former boss had enjoyed in the transfer market it’s amazing he lasted as long as he did) and Mick McCarthy’s appointment seemed to pay immediate dividends with a win at Birmingham in his first game in charge. But they then lost heavily in their next two away games against high flying Crystal Palace and Leicester, only to recover with victories in their last three games.

Warnock said “As soon as Mick came in as manager you knew they’d be fine. They’ve got no worries with him in the job. I thought he would do that, he's a good Championship manager. He has them organised. They have pace and power and are on a great run. They're in the top couple in the form tables at the moment, so it's just our luck we're playing them at this time. But teams in form have brought the best out of us recently.”

Leeds have no new injury problems for this game, but Warnock will have to decide whether to recall Jerome Thomas, who has recovered from the hamstring problem that kept him out of the Derby game. Ipswich should have midfielder Nigel Reo-Coker available after his own hamstring injury, and they might need him if fellow midfield player Luke Hyam fails to recover from a calf problem.

Historically, Leeds have the superior record in the fixture over the year, with 26 wins in league games to Town’s 18 and another 16 games have finished in draws. Will we improve on that record tomorrow? For this one I’m going to let my heart rule my head and predict that Leeds will come out on top in a very tight game.

Photo: Action Images

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