When Leeds United made a disappointing start to the Championship season, their supporters may have felt that it was going to be another one of those dismal years in England’s second tier.

However, following a home defeat to Huddersfield in the Yorkshire derby in September, the Whites have turned their season around and are now well in contention for promotion after a fine run of form.

The Yorkshire outfit moved up to fourth ahead of the New Year's Eve action and Garry Monk is quickly showing what a brilliant job he is doing – especially when you look at the predicament his former side Swansea are in at the bottom of the Premier League.

While they have picked up a number of impressive results over the course of the campaign, there are still things that Monk will want change over the coming weeks and months to keep his side in the race for the top flight.

Here are THREE things Leeds must improve on in 2017…

Scoring

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Despite the fact that they are firmly in playoff reckoning, Leeds will need to improve their goalscoring if they are going to make a push for automatic promotion in the second half of the Championship season.

While the top two of Newcastle United and Brighton and Hove Albion had scored 48 and 38 goals respectively before NYE, Garry Monk’s men have only netted 31 and the manager will want to see that total increase significantly in the coming weeks.

Not relying on Chris Wood

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Of the 31 league goals they have bagged this season, striker Chris Wood has scored more than a third of those - with their second top goalscorer being Souleymane Doukara on four.

Garry Monk will want his side to spread the goals around the team a little more in the second half of the campaign, and they showed that they can in the 4-1 win against Preston North End - when their midfielders chipped in with three of the four goals.

Picking up points against the sides around them

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While they have been on an impressive run of results since that defeat to Huddersfield in September, one area Garry Monk will want to improve on in 2017 is Leeds’ inability to take points from the teams around them in the table.

The Whites were beaten 2-0 at home by Newcastle and then by the same scoreline away at Brighton earlier in the season - a record that they will need to rectify over the coming months if they are to stay in contention for promotion back to the Premier League.