Leeds United: Coyle springs to mind as well as Cook's strike

Granted, Cook’s class shone like a beacon on Tuesday evening, as it has done on numerous occasions since breaking through into the Whites’ line-up as the surprise name among the starting XI in the Championship curtain-raiser at Millwall in August 2014.

While not such a major bolt from the blue, the name of Lewie Coyle on head coach Steve Evans’s midweek teamsheet represented another eye-catching one ahead of Tuesday’s kick-off.

Evans spoke afterwards about a desire to take a mentally-scarred Scott Wootton out of the firing line after his awful faux pas in Saturday’s FA Cup loss at Watford as being instrumental in his decision to hand a full League debut to Hull-born Coyle, whose first start arrived in the derby FA Cup win over Rotherham United last month.

But the Scot was probably also mindful of the maxim that when a team needs a lift it is sometimes politic to play a youngster or two.

Coyle, whose older brother Tommy is a successful professional boxer, vindicated Evans’s faith with a combative shift on the right-hand side of the defence. Despite the availability of fit-again Gaetano Berardi and the option of Wootton, Leeds’s head coach admits that the 20-year-old has every chance of retaining possession of the right-back slot for Monday’s trip to Brighton.

Evans said: “There was a temptation to put Berardi in, but I couldn’t let my eyes deceive me and not play young Lewie.

“No one should be guaranteed a run in the team because you have to produce performances.

“I’ll be assessing Lewie every day we train between now and Brighton. What I would say is that if he trains as well as he has done, then he’ll keep his shirt because he deserves to.

“If he drops it, then it would fall upon me to take the difficult decision to take him out.

“For a couple of weeks, he’s been one of our best players in training.

“The benchmark is you have to be outstanding every day, not one or two days and not for half a minute in Under-21s games.

“He had one or two little spells where he was naive (against Fulham), but he didn’t let it faze him. He should be immensely proud.

“Now he needs to have the same discipline as the Cooks, the Mowatts, the Taylors where he can go out and produce performances on a regular basis.”

Evans added: “The kids here and previous managers before me have managed those kids magnificently. They have picked the times to put them in, let them run and take them out.

“It’s my job to do that with Lewie. I put him in for his debut in the Cup. Lewie’s performance after Rotherham actually dipped, so it’ll be really interesting to see if he maintains the standards because the one thing I know is that Lewis Cook in the next few days will be magnificent in training.

“It won’t be about the goal he scored. They don’t rest on their laurels.

The effervescent star of Cook illuminated the Elland Road sky on a cold winter night, with his wonder strike against Fulham leaving the overwhelming majority of the 17,103 crowd in raptures.

The goal underlined his importance to the Whites’ cause – even accounting for the fact that he only turned 19 earlier this month.

It represented a picture-book first goal in league football for the prodigously-gifted midfielder, with Evans’s gratitude such that he planted a kiss on Cook’s cheek when he was interviewed after the game.

Cook’s contribution provided the kiss of life to a comatose United display, which was redeemed only by his magnificent strike and the encouraging display of Coyle.

Adamant that Coyle’s performance on the night also merited equal billing, Cook added: “I thought Coyle had a really good game and he should have been the man of the match really, I think.

“If I hadn’t scored like that, he would have been there.”

Cook’s only previous goal came in the first half of United’s Carling Cup first-round tie at Doncaster Rovers in August, but any pleasure derived from that quickly dissipated following his Keepmoat dismissal 23 minutes later in a game that Leeds went on to lose on penalties.

This time around, Cook was able to well and truly savour his moment.

On his stellar strike, Cook said: “I have scored a few in training, but I haven’t scored any goal better than that.

“It was a different technique when I struck the ball, so I am happy it went in.

“I just turned and had a lot of space and just thought I’d give it a go and it just curled around the goalkeeper and I am happy with it.

“In training, I have been working on my shooting. Maybe not that far out, but on a lot of shooting, so I am happy I have got one.

“I will probably get a video of it and save it somewhere.”