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People talk about priorities and I would take United's promotion from League One above all else this season, but the Johnstone's Paint Trophy has not been worthless by any means.

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Our first-round tie against Bradford City attracted an excellent crowd to Elland Road, and Wednesday's game against Rotherham United will have earned the club a nice little sum from the television coverage provided by Sky Sports.

Our presence in the latter stages would also have interested the broadcaster and, knowing our supporters, we'd have sold reams of tickets had we made the final at Wembley. So to describe the competition as unimportant is wrong.

There was a decent amount of revenue to be had and some of it has passed the club by.

There are clubs in the lower leagues who have too few players to concentrate seriously on cup competitions, but Leeds have enough players to compete on two or three fronts and the fact that Gary McAllister made eight changes at Rotherham underlines that point.

The line-up he chose was talented enough to reach the quarter-finals, and there is no way that Gary will have sent the players out with any suspicion that they might lose in such a disappointing manner.

The problem on Wednesday was not the desire of the players to win the tie – it was the repeated failure of our defence to get to grips with Rotherham's attack.

The backline is the one area of the team that has caused me concern this season.

We are never short of goals or chances, and the funny thing about the game at Don Valley Stadium was that we could easily have scored four or five times ourselves, but the defence is still to find its feet and the simplicity of Rotherham's goals were the most worrying aspect of the 4-2 defeat.

One goal came from a simple long throw-in, and two others were via clean headers from no more than 10 yards out. The frustration for Gary will be that these are simple errors caused by certain players failing to do the basics. They were not down to Rotherham's creativity.

His job is to address that but there is more responsibility on the players to show the right concentration and focus.

In my time in football, the biggest challenge was sometimes to take a positive from a negative, and I do think there is one to be found here.

Leeds in general are having a very good season and a number of their performances have been pleasing on the eye, but Wednesday was a warning about what happens when you fail to do the simple things well.

I'm sure that Gary will have gone back to basics in training to make sure that the obvious quality that Leeds have is also blended with good organisation.

Wednesday's loss at Rotherham and last Saturday's defeat at Peterborough United are hiccups in my eyes, and the players have already shown themselves to be far better than those performances.

Against Brighton tomorrow, I'd like to think that our class and composure will return.