Leeds United manager Jesse Marsch has praised his youth talent after their 'impressive' performances in his side's 1-0 loss to Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Carabao Cup third round.
An 84th minute goal from Boubacar Traore was enough to separate the two sides as the Whites dropped out of the competition a stage earlier than last season.
Marsch handed out four debuts to Darko Gyabi, Mateo Joseph, Sonny Perkins and Joel Robles and the quartet all had good showings but couldn't make a big enough impact to find the win.
READ MORE: Leeds United player ratings as Gyabi, Perkins and Joseph show promise in narrow Wolves loss
Speaking to LUTV after the match, Marsch highlighted the youth players he put in and praised them individually, happy with what he saw.
"Yeah, cup matches can go a lot of different way but we knew we'd put a lot of young players out on the pitch - a lot of young players that we believe in - and I think they performed really well.
"Against a good opponent, an opponent that played a lot of guys that have a lot of first-team minutes, a lot of Premier League minutes, I thought we had a really good performance and were unlucky not to come away with more.
"I would say Mateo Joseph was very good on the day, a little bit unlucky on the action where he's in on goal that he can't find a way to get something on-frame.
"I thought Sonny Perkins also played really well, we used him a couple of different roles but I thought he was really intelligent, found a lot of good spaces, was also dangerous and great defensively.
"And then I thought Darko [Gyabi] really grew into the game. I think he found the game a lot, he looked confident on the ball, he started to initiate things, won some balls in the midfield.
"Willy Gnonto then comes onto the pitch and starts to spark things up for us, so we like our young guys and you can't mimic - even in the Under-21s - what the intensity is going to be like and to see them perform like that I think is great."
Marsch then gave an overview of the game as a whole but noted how towards the end of the match, they can be a bit more watertight.
"Yeah, overall, I thought it was a great performance from every guy on the pitch. I thought Joel Robles played well, showed good presence, we played better than we thought.
"If we played that well and you'd told me before the match, I would've said, 'OK, we've won then'. A little bit unlucky.
"You know, we've talked about in the waning moments of the game if we can be a little bit smarter. Where we play the ball, can we put a bit more pressure on them on their end? So it's unfortunate that we had a couple of giveaways that brought them back into the game but other than that I thought we had great control, particularly in the second half."
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