Game-management has been a key talking point for Nottingham Forest this week, following their midweek defeat at Leeds United.
Head coach Steve Cooper felt his side sat back too much at Elland Road after taking the lead through Orel Mangala, rather than try to press home their advantage. It resulted in one-way traffic for much of the remaining 80 minutes, with the Reds unable to keep their relegation rivals at bay as they crashed to a damaging 2-1 loss.
It is something Cooper and his players have taken on board ahead of today’s trip to Aston Villa. As Forest fight for Premier League survival, there is much riding on the Welshman overseeing the right approach.
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“The reality of it, when I reflected on Leeds, was that we were too protective of going 1-0 up,” Cooper said. “It's not something we've done at all this year.
"I think it was a little bit of new territory. We should have gone the other way really and tried to capitalise on it. It was too early to be protective.
"We didn't play with enough courage with the ball and we didn't take enough risks. We certainly didn't show enough aggression in our defending. But that's something we've been talking about with the players, and we are trying to support them to get to a level.
"We all want the same thing. There's no diversions in the group. Everybody is together. Even the players that haven't started, the players who have been injured or who are coming back from injury, there's a real motivating vibrancy in the group. But we have got to take that into games. We saw it against Wolves. We played well and should have won.
“We need to be brave with the ball. I didn’t like the first half at Leeds, with how passive we sometimes were. I also did not like how we did not take responsibility with the ball. There was a real opportunity to put some good attacks together and play how we want to play.
“There were 80-odd minutes left after we scored. Just carry on playing. Just play normal.
“It is something that we have to look back on. Let’s hope we get the chance again, to go 1-0 up and to do better.
"Certainly one of the big discussion points for us from Leeds is about how we changed too much after the goal. If we work hard enough to get in the lead again away from home - or at home - we've got to make sure we think about what managing the situation looks like.
"When Leeds went 2-1 up, although they did have some good counterattacks, they were a lot deeper than what they were in the first half. So it does naturally go that way a little bit, but maybe not as much as what we showed. Let's hope we have a chance to do better at that again.”
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