Leicester City faced a setback in their progress with a disappointing derby defeat to Nottingham Forest. The club conceded a second-half brace to Chris Wood, suffering from defensive errors that contributed to all three of Forest’s goals. Despite an encouraging first half and a strong start, City struggled in the latter part of the match, ultimately falling short and finishing the game heavily outperformed.
Manager Steve Cooper expressed his thoughts on the game and the implications of the defeat. Cooper conveyed his disappointment with the team’s performance in conceding the goals and highlighted the defensive mistakes that led to their downfall.
Steve Cooper said “It is self-inflicted. We made big mistakes in the build-up of the three goals and we were punished in those moments, which happens in this league. We have to take responsibility for that. We’re not in the game of focusing on individuals, but that has happened. We recovered well in the first half, scored a really good goal, and had good control in the game. We definitely needed to be more of a threat and we showed the boys some images at half-time about where the opportunity was in the game, and there really was. We were really optimistic about the second half being a game for us and one we could attack even more and have a positive impact and get the result. We’ve conceded really poorly at the start of the second half, which wasn’t great. There was still a lot of time to hurt Forest. The third goal was a game-changer in how we wanted the game to look. They make changes to put defenders on. We have to make changes. Any rhythm we had was lost then. Forest are really strong on the counter-attack and we ended up making the game look like that for them. That clearly wasn’t the plan. We have to take responsibility. It’s on us. The way the game went was because of where we failed and got punished for it. We do everything together. Everybody is disappointed, everybody around the club and supporters. It’s a game against a local rival and the last thing you want is it panning how it did tonight. We’ve done a lot of good in the last couple of games and where we feel we’re going. This is a real setback. We have to accept it’s on us. We have to take responsibility.”
When asked about the added sting of losing to a local rival,
Steve Cooper said “Yeah, you don’t want to be losing any games, but you especially don’t want to be losing to local rivals. We have to not shy away from that.”
Cooper pointed out the frustration of the team and acknowledged that the game outcome could have been different. He highlighted the positive aspects of their first-half performance and how their control and impact on the game were promising. However, the second-half performance failed to reflect those efforts and led to the loss.
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