How disappointed are you to go out of the competition after starting so well tonight?
We're obviously disappointed because I thought that we could have won the game. We had a really good start to the game, we still had chances all over the game which we didn't take. We were also disappointed with you're basically preparing for the lucky punch or a penalty shootout and then you lose a game late. So it's a disappointment. We thought that the group that we put on the pitch played a very good game.
No regrets at all making so many changes, then?
No, quite on the contrary. I thought that the performance of the young guys was very good. We have a really tough week of Wednesday in the cup and Saturday playing away. So we tried to make the best, we know that we have a really good squad and we know that we have really talented players who need these steps to develop and we knew that we could trust them and to have a fighting chance here.
There were some real positives, with this game and Saturday’s before the break, how big was the argument to go very strong tonight in a competition that Leeds could win?
I think that you also have to see the last week's very intense games, very tough games. I think we did actually play a group that has a very high probability to win, whereas players who are maybe not as fresh as the group that he put out might not have been better on this particular day against this particular offence. So I have no regrets.
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We don't have any regrets because we trust the squad. We know how big the physical impact is for the schedule and everything.
How do you think Gyabi, Joseph and Perkins did in particular?
I think that they did alright, they showed their potential. Obviously there are details that we are working on with them and these games are important to show these challenges to them and to us how they cope with it, but we were happy with all three of them.
What about Joe Gelhardt? How serious do you think the injury is?
Yeah, we don't have anything clear or anything that I want to say now because it'd be too early but I hope and I think it's nothing too big.
What’s the situation with Patrick and is anyone else struggling for Saturday?
We're going through the process of seeing how it develops, but for Patrick, I think that we have a chance that he might be ready on the weekend. We hope that he will be ready. Everything else is small, day by day, except the guys who are obviously out for the weekend’s because their long term injuries.
Were you hoping that you'd be able to carry some momentum, even though you made a lot of changes, after the last week or so?
I think the last two successes in the Premier League we tried to carry that momentum. We tried to separate the groups to work individually with everyone to prepare them for each of these two games this last week, as well as possible.
You made 10 changes rather than the full 11, was a quite a deliberate choice to leave Jack in as the only survivor from Saturday?
I think it's a mixture of tactical things of just looking which player brings what to the table and what are the alternatives. We thought that Jack is able to give us qualities in that position that we needed and that's a big reason why he was the one to stay in the line-up.
Was there a temptation to keep Cry in there, with the form he's been in?
Yeah, but if you look through Cry’s season that he starts to play a lot in the last weeks. With everything that Jack is able to do on both sides of the ball with the whole situation we thought that it's good to keep Jack on the pitch and to see Cry that he stays fresh because he's still young, he's still adapting to playing so many games.
I think that yeah, we just tried to go for everything individually, then putting together the big picture for both games.
Can you say anything about the speculation about the takeover from San Francisco 49ers?
I'm just focusing on the pitch. You have to ask someone else who knows more about these things
Just a quick one on Sonny Perkins, he’s had a great season with the U21s, can he add to that?
We are watching every single game with U21s and I agree with you that in Sonny we have a player who is very young and extremely talented there. He's a type of player that is eye-catching because that mixture of physical posture and his ability on the ball is rare.
He has to iron out some details. We're working on him because of these things also, too, because he's very young. Even if you don't see the way he plays you have still to bear in mind the way he's able to play for 90 minutes on the highest level and it's just about becoming consistent and working on these details. But just in terms of his talent, his abilities, potential, we're very happy with him and we have a lot of faith in his potential.
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