Leeds United legend reveals bare minimum points target for Aston Villa and Norwich City clashes

Steven Gerrard's Villa arrive at LS11 on Thursday night, before Sunday’s visit of Premier League bottom side Norwich.

Marsch got off to a losing start at Leicester City on Saturday, having worked with the players for four days after replacing Marcelo Bielsa.

But the Whites deserved more and Dorigo believes the impressive performance in the 1-0 defeat should allow the players to go into the Villa game with their heads held high, although he says Leeds are approaching a time in the season when results will be all that matter.

“It’s not must-win against Aston Villa, but I would put Sunday down as a must-win, absolutely,” he told the Evening Post.

“Four points out of six is the minimum for me. If you do get a reversal against Aston Villa your world doesn’t fall apart because there’s still plenty of games to go. The performance against Leicester City and the confidence it will bring is really important but there does come a point when all of that has to turn into results and points.”

Dorigo is confident that after a bright, albeit empty-handed first week in Leeds’ new era, results will start to come for Marsch.

“For the little time Jesse Marsch has been here, what he’s done has been impressive but Aston Villa is another step,” he said.

“They’ve just had a brilliant result so, like every game, it will be difficult. We’ve had a step in the right direction too though and the lads should take plenty of confidence from that.

“You could see after the game they were disappointed, we all were, thinking ‘how did they lose this game?’ but the manager was straight in to stop them feeling sorry for themselves, spelling out the positives and what they should be concentrating on.

“I’m sure the next two games will go the right way.”

Read Tony Dorigo's exclusive column on promising signs from Marsch's first game in tomorrow's YEP.