Leeds are expecting a crowd of over 33,000 for tomorrow’s vital game as West Ham United come to Elland Road, and Neil Warnock thinks that little old us, the fans, will have a vital role to play.

Warnock said that the passionate Leeds crowd were one of the main reasons he took the job, so he must have been disappointed with the attendance of 21,000 against Southampton for his first full home game in charge of the mighty whites. But this time the kick-off is more favourable and nobody will have the option of live TV coverage, and the win at Middlesboro has caused such a surge of optimism that over 30,000 tickets have already been sold.

Warnock told the official site "We've been pushing this and the response has been terrific. With West Ham bringing 3,000 fans and a good support, I wanted our fans that hadn't been recently for whatever reason to get out of the armchair and maybe bring someone else from another armchair. I don't want any negativity. Let's all get together and have a real positive atmosphere. It makes a statement when Leeds United gets a crowd of 30,000 and it can be hostile and intimidating.”

This match will pit the Championship’s two oldest managers against each other, and as both like their teams to show plenty of commitment a high tempo game has to be expected. Warnock is wary of the Hammers’ excellent away record, but he knows that Leeds if we suffer another defeat tomorrow there won’t be enough games remaining to make up lost ground and sneak into the play-offs.

"I can see us having to win at least six or seven games if we are to have a chance. We need a best run of the season, and winning our home games will be the key”. He is likely to name an unchanged starting line-up, although Robbie Rogers could be fit enough to claim a place on the bench after recovering from the bang on the head he suffered against Doncaster. Leigh Bromby and Alex Bruce have returned to light training after their own injury problems but are not so likely to be included.

West Ham have won ten times away from home this season, including the last two, yet a spate of draws in their home games has seen them concede the second automatic promotion place to in-form Reading. As the club have a hefty wage bill for this division as well as substantial debts Sam Allardyce is under pressure from the owners to make a quick return to the Premiership, while at the same time attracting criticism from fans who think his style of football isn’t the ‘West Ham way’.

Despite the pressure facing Big Sam, he still found the time to be complementary about Neil Warnock when he spoke to his club’s official site. “Neil has seen and done it all and knows what a team needs to go on a run like Reading's and he will be looking to do that with Leeds having won his first game on Sunday at Middlesbrough. It will be a very interesting game on Saturday as he has sorted out Leeds main problem of conceding silly goals. Neil has put those defensive errors right and it makes Leeds that much more difficult to beat. Let's hope we can achieve that on Saturday. “

Their team news is that Joey O'Brien, Winston Reid and Julien Faubert will all be given late fitness checks, and we might be relieved that Portugese striker Ricardo Vaz Te will definitely be out. You might remember that when we last met Vaz Te he scored a hat-trick against us for Barnsley during our infamous 4-1 defeat on New Year ’s Eve, before his transfer to Upton Park.

Instead, forward Ravel Morrison might make his first appearance for the club after signed from Manchester United at the end of January, and he sounds like quite an interesting character to say the least. Although he’s still a teenager he is known for having serious disciplinary problems in his lifestyle off the field, and since his move to the capital he has already found time to be fined by the FA for making homophobic remarks on twitter. That said, he’s supposedly very talented, but he will need to get his head together if he is to have any sort of future in the game.

If you can’t make it to Elland Road tomorrow, make sure you catch the Football League show on the BBC, as this has been billed as the main game on the show, so we can look forward to some reasonably extensive highlights. It’s hard to tell which way this game is going to go and my predictions are rubbish anyway, but I’m going to stick my neck out and go for a 1-1 draw.

Photo: Action Images via Reuters