Liam Cooper makes admission about Leeds United display at Southampton and draws on sole positive - YEP 16/10/21
Whites captain Liam Cooper said Leeds United had conceded the first half of Saturday's clash at Southampton and refused to blame the absence of key players for the display in a 1-0 defeat.
By Lee Sobot
Leeds were without six first team players for their latest
Premier League contest at St Mary's as Junior Firpo joined injured Kalvin
Phillips, Patrick Bamford, Luke Ayling and Robin Koch on the sidelines in
addition to star winger Raphinha.
The Brazilian was not risked having played 71 minutes for
Brazil in the early hours of Friday morning but Cooper refused to go looking
for excuses after a display in which Leeds did not manage a single shot on
goal.
United's first attempt of any kind did not arrive until the
45th minute when Tyler Roberts fired over and Southampton then bagged the only
goal of the game when Armando Broja finished off a counter attack that followed
a Whites corner.
Asked how he assessed the afternoon's work for Leeds, Cooper
admitted to LUTV: "We conceded the first half. That's as abrupt as it is.
"Not at it first half, I think we didn't win first
balls, didn't win second balls and when you come to away grounds like this you
are going to struggle.
"Second half I thought we played well, started the half
well and then concede on the counter-attack.
"You go one behind in this league and it's always hard
to come back into the game.
"But we stuck at it - I suppose that's the only
positive we can take, really.
"You can't go giving first-half performances away like
that and we've got to learn from it, which we do.
"Obviously we're missing a couple of players but that's
just how it is, that's how it goes.
"We're back in Monday, we'll analyse it and put it
right for next week."
Assessing how difficult it becomes when the likes of star
men Raphinha and Phillips are missing, Cooper said: "Always. You take two
of the dominant players out of any team in the league, they feel it.
"But we don't use that as an excuse, we can't use that
- the lads train every single day together and whoever comes in is expected to
reach those standards.
"We have belief in everybody.
