Leeds United began their Championship season by winning 3-2 away at Bolton Wanderers, with Liam Cooper shining in the victory.
Had Pontus Jansson been available for Leeds’ season curtain-raiser with Bolton on Sunday, it would have hardly been a surprise if a large portion of Whites supporters would have urged Thomas Christiansen to pick the Swede and Matthew Pennington at centre-back for the trip to the Macron Stadium.
Liam Cooper did not enjoy the best year last term, and was greatly overshadowed by Jansson and Kyle Bartley, so the Leeds supporters may have been nervous about how well he would do against the Trotters.
Liam Cooper
But it is surely fair to say that Cooper, who captained the side, enjoyed one of his best displays for the club as Leeds kicked off their campaign with a 3-2 win.
And the statistics certainly back that suggestion up.
| Total Tackles | Tackles Won | Total Clearances | Duels Won | Interceptions | Total Passes | Accurate Passes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liam Cooper | 3 | 3 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 48 | 43 |
The 25-year-old ranked highly in a number of areas throughout the game when compared with his teammates.
Only Luke Ayling won more challenges than the former Chesterfield man, while his centre-back partner for much of the game, Pennington was the only player to make more clearances than the eight Cooper made.
He was only behind two players – Ayling and Eunan O’Kane, who was simply magnificent in the middle of the park – for the number of duels won, and had only O’Kane and Pablo Hernandez ahead of him when it came to the number of accurate passes made.
And with no player making more interceptions than Cooper, it is surely fair to say that he deserves a huge amount of credit for his performance in the victory, and made a fantastic case to Christiansen to be involved in his number one centre-back pairing during the coming campaign.
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