Simon Grayson believes our season is shaping up nicely, and he also thinks that the Leeds fans travelling to Burnley tomorrow can roar the team on to another victory.
Despite Ken Bates comments last week that seventh place in the Championship wasn’t good enough for a club of our standing, Simon had a rather different view when he told the Yorkshire Post “We’re in a good position and not far away from where we’d like to be.” He also told the paper that the big following we took to Turf Moor last season played a big part in our comeback, when we turned a 2-0 first half deficit into a 3-2 win.
“At half-time and 2-0 down you’re wondering if you can get back into the game, but in the second half we were outstanding and took the game to them. My half-time team talk was very simple – just listen to the Leeds fans above us. There were 4,000 of them making so much noise and the players realised exactly what it meant to them.” And despite live television coverage we are close to taking up our full allocation once again, with only 200 tickets remaining a couple of days ago.
Before the game Grayson will have one selection problem to sort out, as central defenders Darren O'Dea and Tom Lees are available again after missing the Leicester game through injury and suspension respectively. But Andy O'Brien and Paddy Kisnorbo were outstanding in that game, at it will be difficult to leave them out. O’Brien in particular has done well to recover from the fitness and personal problems that were affecting his form earlier in the season, when some fans made him a scapegoat for the number of goals we conceded in the first couple of games.
The other team news is that Mika Vayrynen is definitely out after surgery on a groin problem, while Grayson also said that a few other players were struggling to overcome knocks, although Snodgrass should have recovered from the back problem that caused him to drop out of the Scotland squad in midweek. It’s no surprise that Alex McCarthy will continue in goal with Alex Cairns on the bench, with Rachubka still banished to the goalkeeping equivalent of outer Siberia.
Burnley are having a disappointing season so far, and are lying in 18th place, having only won two of their games at Turf Moor. But Grayson knows we can’t afford to treat them lightly, and he told the official site “They’re in a bit of transitional period and that can lead to inconsistency, but we’ll have problems if we’re not at it like we were at Leicester”.
Burnley’s former boss Brian Laws took some awful flack on their message boards for their second half capitulation in last season’s game, and it wasn’t long after that when he parted company with the club. Better things were expected of Eddie Howe when he was enticed to move to Lancashire from Bournemouth, but so far it hasn’t really taken off for him.
And Howe sounded a bit under pressure when he spoke to the Lancashire Telegraph. “We’re ready for this game, we know the importance of it,” said the Clarets boss. We know it's an important one and we need to make sure we perform. We're on the back of two defeats so we're eager to put that to bed and get back to winning ways if we can. And it's on television against one of our fiercest rivals so it's all set up to be a classic encounter.”
Which just goes to show that we’re not famous any more! You don’t find many Leeds fans that see Burnley as big rivals. At least Burnley are without any significant injury problems for this game. Michael Duff could return after recovering from a knee injury which has kept him out for two months, and his fellow defender Brian Easton should manage to play again despite carrying a hip injury. One bit of good news is that Burnley have signed Sam Vokes on loan from Wolves, as he looked fairly rubbish when he played for us a couple of years ago.
Before the game there will be a minutes applause for our beloved former boss Jimmy Adamson, who is thought of rather more highly in Burnley than by those old enough to remember his spell in charge at Elland Road. This is bound to be impeccably observed by all the Leeds fans present.
If Leeds can maintain the improvement we showed at Leicester we should win this game, and my prediction is that we will.