Leeds United predicted XI gallery v Blackburn Rovers with double swap and position change

Daniel Farke has a huge amount of trust in his players, something he made clear in his pre-match press conference following some criticism of the team’s performance, the level of urgency in their play and his own substitution policy after a 0-0 draw with Sunderland on Tuesday night. He said: “After each and every game you analyse what we have done, also pretty self critical what we as a coaching staff or me as a manager could have done better. But you never know. So it's impossible to judge because you never know if you would have played a game, for example, the last game with a completely different line-up or you substitute earlier or you substitute not at all. You never know, if a different striker would have perhaps scored or if I should have let Patrick Bamford longer on the pitch because he would have scored in the last minute or whatever, or you should have changed the base formation. You never know. It's also why we love the sport that much because everyone can have an opinion. But for me it's just important that I totally trust my players and my group of players otherwise we wouldn't share for example that many goals.

"Yes, if someone thinks we should be there with better decisions, I can't argue against this because I can't prove the difference. Like I mentioned before I like to stay humble and also to stay self critical and I don't want to put myself into the spotlight. But staying humble, I love the statistics, I think I was nominated three times right now and won three times the manager of the month. I am nominated for manager of the season, we are playing the best season in the history of this club in terms of points. We have the best defensive record, we have the best home record in the league, we have the best home record in the history of Leeds United Football Club. We are there with 87 points after 42 games, we have shared many many goals, we have the best goal difference. We have still the chance to play the perfect season. It could be that it's perhaps because of me that we are not there even better in the table and are already promoted. It could be, I can't argue against this because I can't prove it a different way round. But one thing is also for sure, although I try to analyse each and every game and I also like to be self critical, if I am allowed to say this in a humble way, I am also not too nervous or too critical about our season so far. The most important topic is I totally trust and back my players and I also managed the season out of this league also a few times and you have a gut feeling and the gut feeling right now is we are out to create something special in the last games and the gut feeling is that we are allowed also to look back on the season and speak about it being quite a successful season. It's just the gut feeling I have and we will see what the outcome is.”

Farke’s trust for his players has been seen in the lack of wholesale changes to the starting line-up throughout the campaign, though he has freshened things up when necessary and allowed players to fight their way into the side. And while an unchanged line-up would not come as a massive shock when the team news comes at 11.30am on Saturday morning, there are a couple of changes we could see. Here’s our predicted XI.