Leeds United: Head coach Monk's '˜managing' players - Ritchie

But I’ve got to say I don’t know whether I would do that unless Garry Monk is just wanting to keep some of them for the league.

It’s a strange one and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before but he must have had his reasons. And it worked.

Garry said it was because his players had not recovered from Saturday’s game at Sheffield Wednesday and there’s a lot of managers coming out and saying stuff like this.

The Sheffield Wednesday manager said that some of his players are not at the same level of fitness as each other.

And I am thinking if I would have been saying that as a manager just after pre-season has finished then I think I might have been getting pulled in by the board saying ‘well, why are they not all fit?’

It seems to be all right these days because there’s quite a few people I’ve heard say ‘we are not fully up to speed yet’.

But you should be hitting the ground running.

I think from the recovery point of view, if he feels that the best side to play again in the league is the team that beat Sheffield Wednesday then, yes, obviously he has made the right decision given them a little bit extra rest and recuperation.

I know Luton had a few chances at the end but Leeds had a few as well and from what I have read it was probably a fair result.

But it is a strange one and I’ve never heard of that many changes before.

Young Tyler Denton scored the match-winner at Luton but I think you have got to keep Charlie Taylor in.

You play your best players.

No disrespect to Tyler but he’s still learning his trade but what Garry has now been able to do is have a sneaky look at how far away he is.

It’s great to come in and, as a full-back, to score on your debut is fantastic. But I think that was probably just a sneak preview to see how he copes with it which by all accounts he did cope with it quite well.

They might be looking at that so that if Charlie does go or whenever he does go they might have somebody there and they don’t have to go out and spend a load of cash to fill that role.

Looking back at Saturday’s game at Sheffield Wednesday, of course you want to get that first win under your belt.

And it’s nice that they have had two clean sheets as well.

That will give the lads a bit of confidence and it was a win that will probably give you a little bit more confidence with it being a derby game so it’s always hard to go there.

I’ve had that when I was playing and it’s a difficult place to go to Sheffield Wednesday.

The crowd get behind you and I wouldn’t have said it’s been a real happy hunting ground for Leeds. But it’s great to get one over on your neighbours.

And, hopefully, the lads can take a lot of confidence from that into the league game at Nottingham Forest this weekend.

I think they should definitely be going there with the belief that they can make it three quick wins in a row.

In a derby game at Sheffield Wednesday, it’s never easy to get a result so you can think of that when you go to Nottingham Forest.

I know it’s another hard place to go to and win but you would expect the derby atmosphere would probably tip that over the edge as maybe a harder place to get a result at. So I think they should be going in there confident.

They know it’s going to be difficult because they know they are a good side but I think the players should be going in with confidence and saying ‘right, we know we can win away from home, let’s think about what we did.’

I know that Garry said they had a game plan and they stuck to it virtually to the letter.

And if that’s the way he’s going to go away from home then I would suggest that probably he might go with the same sort of game plan and try and pull that sort of victory off at Forest.