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BBC pundit says Liam Cooper was brilliant as Leeds draw with Aston Villa
Matthew Kilgallon has told that Liam Cooper was brilliant as Leeds United battled their way to an extremely impressive point at home to Aston Villa on Sunday.
Jesse Marsch’s side’s hopes of winning the game were largely dashed when Luis Sinisterra picked up a needless red card at the start of the second-half.
Leeds produced a colossal performance to earn a point. In fact, they had one of the final chances of the contest, with Patrick Bamford setting up Mateusz Klich. However, Klich’s effort was blocked.
Liam Cooper was ‘brilliant’
Defensively, Leeds were brilliant. Illan Meslier made some superb saves when Villa did break through. But the likes of Rasmus Kristensen, Luke Ayling, Robin Koch and Pascal Struijk produced some amazing last-ditch defending.
However, Kilgallon picked out Cooper as the star of the show as the players were leaving the field after the full-time whistle went.
“He was brilliant. He was brilliant, I was really impressed with him. Really, really good. The headers,” .
“It’s his leadership and everything about it. You come back in, he puts a performance in like that. He’s only going to get better hopefully with more games. He’ll probably be really sore tomorrow, stiff because he hasn’t played for a while.”
It was a big call to bring Cooper back into the side. Diego Llorente had a torrid time against Brentford last time out. But Cooper has had to bide his time to regain his full fitness.
Ultimately, the decision was vindicated. Leeds were quite poor in possession during the first-half. But the defence did their job of nullifying the threat from the Villans’ attacking players.
And the Leeds captain will almost certainly keep his place for the clash with Crystal Palace next weekend.
They looked to be much more solid with Cooper in the side. And it seems that Leeds picked up a point that they can be very happy with given the effort they put in to deny the visitors at Elland Road.