WEEKEND POLL: Leeds United’s position leaves McDermott frustrated

Instead of being 12th in the Championship and eight points adrift of the play-offs, the Elland Road chief had hoped that his side would be much higher in the table and pushing for the Premier League.

“I want to get there quicker,” said McDermott ahead of Leeds returning to home soil for the first time in five weeks. “There is no doubt that I wanted to get there quicker.

“What are we? Twelfth in the league. We have had progress, the staff around the ground and the training ground talk about that. They have been here longer than I have been here.

“But I personally wanted to get there quicker but we’ve still got 14 games to go. The team was better (in the 1-1 draw at QPR) – it was organised and it had more pace in it.”

With four home games this month, March offers an opportunity for Leeds to make one last push for the play-offs.

McDermott added: “I was asked the question (about reaching the play-offs) in the season when we won the league at Reading. In the September, we had lost five on the trot and I was asked, ‘Do you think promotion is out of question?’

“If I had said, ‘Don’t be silly, we’re going to win the league’, then everyone would have laughed at me. So I can’t answer that question.

“Are we there? No. But we are trying to get there as quickly as we can.

“Results will tell you if we are close or not. That game against QPR, for me we were the better team. I look at that game and in the second half we never kicked on the way we want to kick on.

“That is the next stage for us. We go in 1-1 but we can still win that game 2-1. That is what Championship teams do and that is what a team like (second-placed) Burnley are doing at the moment.

“I know what it takes and what kind of team or set-up it takes to win this league. The teams that generally win this league have a certain way of playing, a certain amount of pace in their team and they run a certain amount over the game. That is what we want here and what we want to achieve.”