Ayling says 21-year-old was playing at centre-back in Leeds training over the past week

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Leeds United’s Luke Ayling has revealed to the club’s official website that Marcelo Bielsa’s side were prepared for the loss of Liam Cooper last night.

Cooper was named among Leeds’ starters yesterday, despite suffering with an injury over the international break.

However, he felt a problem in the warm-up and had to pull out of playing in the match.

As a result Pascal Struijk was forced to step into Leeds’ team at the last minute.

The late change of plans could have affected some teams negatively, but Leeds were prepared for every eventuality.

And Ayling revealed that Struijk had actually been playing in central defence in training, rather than his usual midfield berth.

“We knew Liam was touch and go for the game, he worked really hard to even have a chance of playing and unfortunately it came around too quickly,” Bielsa said.

“Pascal trained in there all week, he knew he was going to have a chance of playing, so he came in and played very well.

“It was a bit of a hard one to take, but these things can happen.”

Bielsa appears to view Struijk as Leeds’ fourth choice centre-back nowadays, after his impressive showings in the position towards the back end of last season.

The 21-year-old is more comfortable in midfield but is really starting to prove his versatility and he put in a solid display yesterday, even though Leeds lost 1-0 to Wolves.