Brentford v Leeds United: Pearce backing new coach to make impact

The Slovenian, who until last weekend was manager of Austrian side Strum Graz, will take charge of his first game today after being named as Dave Hockaday’s successor during the week.

Milanic has inherited a group whose confidence and morale has been restored by an unbeaten run of four games that has yielded 10 points.

Pearce said: “It has come off the back of four good results and we’ll give him a chance to show us what he can do and hopefully he can improve us.

“There is a lot of shape and organisation. Hopefully, this will bring a different aspect to our game so that we are more solid as a team.

“To be fair, we have only had a couple of days training now so it is difficult to say at the moment. We’ve got the international break coming up so he will probably be able to put in plenty of training in there.”

Meanwhile, United have sacked football consultant Graham Bean – a former compliance officer at the Football Association – following a disagreement with president Massimo Cellino over the rearrangement of next week’s game against Reading.

Originally scheduled for Tuesday night, the match was put back 24 hours in July after the Royals’ meeting with Wolverhampton Wanderers was moved to Sunday to be shown live on Sky.

Bean discussed the change with then head coach Hockaday before agreeing to the switch but Cellino, who was not consulted, is unhappy as it now means Leeds face a quick turnaround due to playing Sheffield Wednesday a week today in a lunchtime kick-off.