Liam Cooper says United have "come together as a team and as a club" to turn their form around after admitting they were being "written off" just last month.

Steve Evans’ side remain unbeaten in December after picking up 10 points from a possible 12 - their best run of form of so far this season.

United now occupy a much healthier league position of 13th place and just five points stand in their way of the top six, which is where Cooper wants to continue heading towards.

“When you take 10 points from a possible 12 it’s always going to be an upbeat dressing room, and rightly so,” he said.

“We’re five points off the play-offs now and we’re looking up. I said that three or four weeks ago when the pressure was on and people were saying we were in a relegation battle.

“But we’ve come together as a team and as a club, we’ve stuck at it and we’re right back up the table.

“The hard work doesn’t finish now, though. We’ve done so well to get ourselves in this situation and we’ve got to keep going.

“We can’t get too over the top. We’ve got to approach each game as if it’s our last, and we’ll do that.

“We were getting written off, but we’ve proved a lot of people wrong and a lot of teams in the league wrong as well. They’ll be looking down now and looking at us coming for them.

“The manager keeps saying ‘put a few wins together and teams above you will start thinking ‘Leeds are coming.’

“But he keeps getting on at us about not getting complacent and I don’t think the lads will. We’ve not got that type of character.”

Reflecting on Sunday’s 1-0 victory over 10-man Preston North End, a result which came courtesy of an Alan Browne own goal, Cooper said: “We’ve worked hard and dug in again.

“We made it a little bit hard for ourselves in the second half.

“We scored at a good time and you start to think that we can go and get more, it just wasn’t to be. But we managed to keep another clean sheet and that’s always nice.

“We stuck at it and defended well. I thought we looked dangerous on the break, we just struggled to find that final pass to get us that second goal to make it a lot more comfortable.

“But the main thing is that we didn’t concede and we’ve got another three points. That’s a big positive.”