Matteo: Praised by Venables (MichaelSteele/Allsport)

But the Scotland international will finally start training with this week after his knee injury.

The centre back has earned boss Terry Venables' praise for his performances this season but his injury finally caught up with him in the win against Manchester United, when he was replaced by Lucas Radebe at half-time.

And he could miss out when Leeds face Ukrainian unknowns Metalurg Zaporizhia.

`It was a shame I had to come off (against United), but I've been struggling with injury for the last couple of weeks and it just didn't feel right and I didn't want to jeopardise things for the lads,' revealed Matteo.

`I don't think I have trained this season. I'm just playing games at the moment, but I'm going to try and get that sorted this week.

`I'll have a little bit of rest, treatment now for the rest of the week and try to get back training. We will then see what happens, but I'm looking forward to Europe again.'

With Matteo soldiering on with the injury, Venables concedes the centre-back has `led from the front' this season, proving he was the right choice to take over the skipper's armband from Rio Ferdinand following his £29.1million move to Old Trafford.

`He's grabbed hold of the job and he's done very well. I've been very pleased with Dominic as a captain,' stated Venables.

`He has done really well this year because a lot of players wouldn't have been able to have gone on, but he is so determined to play under difficult circumstances. He wants to do the right things.'

Matteo is hoping the victory over United will act as a spur for the team to finally end the club's decade-long silverware drought, although he is aware there are problems which still need to be addressed.

`It was a good week for us with two good wins and hopefully this sets us up for a real assault now,' added Matteo.

`But we have to take into account the teams we lost to (Sunderland and Birmingham), so we have to start putting that right because we played pretty poorly.