The cheap seats are close to selling out for the visit of Oldham Athletic, and our only fitness doubt is Robert Snodgrass.

Snodgrass will have a late fitness test on his hamstring, and Gary Mc.Allister to the official site "Snoddy's got a little bit of a tight hamstring, so he's a doubt at this stage, but we'll see.  There's a couple of days to go, so hopefully he'll be okay." On the other hand, David Prutton has recovered from his own knock and is back in the squad.

If Snodgrass doesn’t make it, I expect Robinson to switch to the right wing, while Johnson comes into the side on the left. Kilkenny is on his way back to Leeds after representing his country at the Olympics, as the Aussies went out of the competition at the group stage. But he is likely to be rested after the long flight and we probably won’t see him back in action until next week.

Despite the exorbitant ticket prices for this category ‘A’ game, there is certain to be a big crowd and a great atmosphere. This first home game has been eagerly awaited all summer, with the fans expecting a promotion campaign now that we have the luxury of starting level on points with everyone else.

The North-East and North-West corners have already sold out, and the South Stand is expected to do so by the end of today. There are only limited seats remaining in the Don Revie stand, which leaves just the family area and the £32 seats in the East and West stands.

Oldham’s management team includes a couple of familiar names from the 1980s, with their boss being John Sheridan and his assistant Tommy Wright. Sheridan told his club’s official site, "This is a great game for us against probably the biggest team in the division in front of a massive crowd. I know I've said it before but these are the games players should want to play in - they've got an opportunity to test themselves against a massive club. Without meaning to be disrespectful, we went there and gave a good account of ourselves last year and I feel we can do so again”.

Ah yes, that game on new year’s day last year. Every Oldham website has been crowing about their victory at Leeds that day, but that was during the period when Poyet had left and we had Harry Bassett as Wise’s number two. We’ve since heard that all was not well behind the scenes at that time, which was not long before Wise decided to jump ship and head north to take up a well-paid job with the Geordies. Since then Macca has had time to improve the squad and get his team playing better football, so Oldham can’t expect to come up and turn us over in the same manner tomorrow.

Oldham striker Craig Davies starts a three match ban after being sent off during the week for a headbutt on a Rochdale player, and Sheridan described his behaviour as 'Idiotic'. Lewis Alessandra is likely to deputise. They could also be missing summer signing Kevin Maher, who is struggling with bruised ribs that he aggravated in training, but his fellow midfield player Kelvin Lomax is expected to recover from a dead leg.

If confident about this one, and I’ll go for Leeds to win by a couple of goals.

Photo: Action Images

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