Silver lining to new Leeds United disappointment but player and Championship must: Tony Dorigo

We could see the style of football and how boss Daniel Farke wants the boys to play coming together. It’s clear that the confidence is starting to grow because we’re certainly having more possession, more of the ball and playing in a style that I think the players would naturally enjoy. A couple of clean sheets is also good and scoring one or two goals is handy as well.

But the downside clearly is Georginio Rutter and Patrick Bamford going off injured which is a real blow and I think there’s no surprise in the fact that the club are in the transfer market looking for reinforcements – and up front would have been one of those places.

Of course you need strikers. Any side that gets promoted has got a talisman that scores a good few goals and that’s exactly what we need, whether it’s Bamford or Rutter or whoever. You need them fit and on the pitch so that is disappointing.

I think if you look at where we need to strengthen, we have done that now in the goalkeeping area through the acquisition of Karl Darlow which is good. There’s also talk of a centre half. But it’s also that No10 position and a striker and obviously possibly a left-back too. They are the positions.

I’m sure the club has got a lot of options in those areas but it’s what’s available, when and how and I think more to the point it’s a case of who’s still going to be going out of the door too. I think that’s an issue as well.

As much as we all want to get it done as quickly as we can, I think it’s going to go right until the last day of the transfer window before we actually see exactly what business we can and can’t do. It’s a frustrating one and I think for everyone from the outside it’s a case of ‘just go and buy someone and on we go’. But I’m sure it’s not always that straightforward or easy.

Young Mateo Joseph finished Sunday’s friendly against Hearts in the No9 role after Rutter and then Bamford went off injured and he is one of the players that I thought impressed in pre-season. He was brought on to play down that left channel a couple of times and looked very good. I could see he was really frustrated in the last game because he was so close to getting through and getting on the end of a couple against Hearts.

Suddenly a goal or two makes things very, very different but we all know that he has been banging them in for the under-21s. The first team is a step up and obviously it’s very different. He is a striker and he wants a chance so if he does get it then I’m sure that with the right service he’ll actually do quite well.

But it’s one of those unknowns and it’s been pretty clear for me from the outset that the new owners don’t really want unknowns. They want some experience and they want people that have been there and done it, hence Daniel Farke, hence Karl Darlow. Ethan Ampadu has played in the English leagues. Chance is not what we want to be doing and I don’t think the owners want to be doing that either.

We’ve also had another exit from the club this week with Max Wober joining Borussia Monchengladbach on loan and I thought he came in and did a wonderful job after joining in the January transfer window. He was one of those leaders in the team, like Liam Cooper and Tyler Adams, that sort of player. I thought if we can just retain one or two of those types of players we’ll be absolutely fine and of course Wober was one of those we would have loved to have stayed.

I’m disappointed that he’s moved on because I think he would have been an absolute asset. You can understand that these players are looking at it in a different way and off they go. But on the same side of things, I think that with any successful side that I played in, the hunger and the unity has always been there. You might not have the best players in the league but I’ll tell you what, you certainly need the best attitude and camaraderie and that gets you a hell of a long way.

If you haven’t got that, you’ve got a problem, and so if anyone hasn’t got that attitude then off they go and it’s actually not as big of a miss as we might think. It’s more to do with that unity and solidarity.

The new Championship season gets underway on Sunday against Cardiff and Leeds are second favourites to win the division. But I have a load of reservations about that because I have no idea what team we are going to end up with! What I do know is that I can see a really nice pattern of play, a great signing in Ampadu, some really good youngsters and we have still got some players to come back from injury.

All around, there are positives. But I think those positives could even go higher once the window ends and we possibly get one or two more.

We’ve been away from the Championship for three years now but what I do know is that it’s an absolute slog, it’s a marathon, it’s a fight and we will be the big boys coming down to the Championship.

In every single game we know what we’re in for. They are all going to be huge, tough games so that’s going to be no surprise. We’ve got to be ready for that. Hopefully we can surmount that and show how good we are.