'That can be worked on' - Leeds United striker Patrick Bamford eyeing next step up after first Whites hat-trick

Whites no 9 Bamford has made a hugely impressive start to his second crack at Premier League football with the 27-year-old slamming home a clinical 19-minute hat-trick in last Friday night's 3-0 win at Aston Villa.

The victory sent Leeds sixth ahead of Monday night's hosting of fourth-placed Leicester City - and Bamford himself is taking high rank in the division's goalscoring charts.

Only Tottenham Hotspur's Son Heung-Min and Everton's Dominic Calvert-Lewin have outscored Bamford thus far with the Whites striker on six goals in six games alongside Leicester City ace Jamie Vardy and Liverpool star Mo Salah.

Bamford, though, feels he should actually be joint top of the charts with eight alongside Son with the Whites forward's ambitious approach typified by his assessment of his hat-trick display at Villa.

"If you look at things like you're at the top already, there's only one way to go, and that's down," Bamford told Sky Sports.

"If you keep setting yourself little challenges, keep pushing so you're always striving to achieve something, in your mind you're never at the top so you're always trying to push yourself even further.

"That's the way to get the best out of yourself.

"Even though I scored three (at Villa), in my head I should have scored five.

"There was the header in the first half, it was tough and quite far out, and the one on my right foot, I didn't angle my foot properly after getting in front of the defender.

"That's a technique thing and something that can be worked on in training.

"It's weird coming away from having scored three that there's a part of you that thinks you could have scored more.

"I guess that's the striker's mentality."

Bamford's first attempt at the Premier League began in August 2015 for Crystal Palace on loan from Chelsea.

Another 26 outings then followed for Palace, Burnley, Norwich City and Middlesbrough who were relegated to the Championship in the Spring of 2017 with Bamford having netted once in 27 top-flight outings though 23 of those appearances came from off the bench.

The striker then netted 13 times for Boro in the subsequent Championship campaign before making the £7m switch to Leeds the following summer.

Ten goals were netted in the 2018-19 season, upped to 16 last term.

Now, even in a higher division, the forward is already nearly half way there to matching last season's Championship target.

Bamford is clearly getting better, but so too, he says, is the Premier League as a whole with the forward hailing the work of Whites head coach Marcelo Bielsa in raising the bar.

"The level of the Premier League has got higher," said the Whites striker.

"As the years go on, football keeps developing and developing, the players get faster, quicker, smarter. You've got to grow with it all of the time, otherwise you'll get left behind.

"Personally, I've changed a lot physically, mentally and I've got a manager who believes in me, puts his faith in me. That's massive.

"He's brought me on leaps and bounds with the training methods and sometimes tough love.

"He needs to take a lot of credit, not only for me but the way our team performs.

"It's roughly the same group of players that, before he arrived, were a mid-table Championship side, that says it all."

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Thank you Laura Collins