Leeds can be delighted with the second half performance at Sunderland, which should really have earned us all three points, but Daniel Farke knows we will have to keep this run going before we can start to think about being safe from relegation.

After the game he told BBC Match of the Day "Wins are always good - not just for the table, but also for the confidence of the dressing room”. Er, we didn’t actually win, but I presume he’s referring to the overall performance. He continued:-

“We are in really good form and we never know when we are beaten. Even when we are in a losing position, we know that we can always come back and we can score. It's a good period but we have to keep going. Twenty points is good at the stage of the season - but it's not enough to stay in this league. We will need to win many more games, and for that we will need to keep going."

Farke named an unchanged starting eleven for this game, which was a luxury his opposite number didn’t have. If you glance at a Sunderland fans’ forum you’ll see much moaning about the number of players they have away at the AFCON tournament. You know, all the African players that they knew perfectly well would be missing this part of the season when they chose to sign them in the summer.

But there was one African player who managed to slip through the net, and we were left to curse the manager of DR Congo for not selecting Adingra, ensuring he was still available for this game. First because he supplied the second of the two hefty challenges that left Joe Rodon hobbling around.

Rodon bravely chose to continue at first, but his lack of movement contributed to our inability to defend properly from a 28th minute long throw, which was only cleared as far as Xhaka just outside the box. His excellent pass set that man Adingra free on the left, and the Congo man curled his shot around Perri and inside the far post.

Shortly after that Rodon accepted that he really couldn’t go on, and Farke decided on a change in formation this early in the game, rather than using Bornauw as a like-for-like replacement. Instead Tanaka came on as we switched to 4-3-3, with Okafor going out to the wing. I don’t know if Rodon aggravated his injury by staying on as long as he did, but he’s now expected to be out until the middle of January at least.

We came close to equalising when Aaronson cut inside and his shot beat Roefs, but Hume had raced back to clear off the line. Aaronson then sent a dangerous ball across the face of goal which Okafor was inches away from getting to. But at the end an unmarked Brobbey should really have put the home side two in front when he headed against the post.

Whatever Daniel Farke said at half time certainly had the desired affect, as we came out to totally dominate the game for the first half hour of the second period, starting with a 47th minute goal which involved all eleven of our players touching the ball. We started by playing the ball back down our right flank to Perri, and then starting to build down the left.

But the key pass was Stach’s excellent long ball to pick out Aaronson on the right, and his cross found Calvert-Lewin racing into the right place at the right time to score from close range, his seventh goal in the last six games. And as many have pointed out, even Harry Kane has never managed to score in that many consecutive matches.

We should have gone in front a few minutes later as a flick-on from Aaronson found Bogle in space just beyond the far post, but he could only chest the ball across the face of goal and wide. He might have been trying to knock the ball to Clavert-Lewin rather than shooting, but whatever he was doing, it didn’t quite work.

We continued to dominate, with Stach covering a lot of ground, and winning possession a couple of times as Sunderland tried to break downfield, to recycle the ball to our forward players to create a chance. But the consensus is that Aaronson was our man of the match, leaving his keyboard critics a huge amount of humble pie to eat alongside their cold turkey.

We didn’t manage to convert this pressure into a winning goal, with a Bijol header and powerful shot from Ampadu being directed straight at Roefs, and the late introduction of Nmecha and Gnonto wasn’t enough to force a winner. Sunderland did have a few moments as we moved towards the end of the game, and I started to fear that they might snatch a ridiculous win despite our performance.

Thankfully that didn’t happen, but although I would have been happy with a point from this difficult fixture before kick-off, I can’t help thinking it’s more like two points dropped. Even so, this now takes us seven points clear of the dreaded bottom three, and although the manager is right to stay that we have got plenty still to do, we can start to feel optimistic about securing another season in the Premier League.

Reuters