"We did not play to our identity" | Cooper

Steve Cooper said Swansea City had not played to their identity in defeat to Stoke.

The Swans suffered just a second defeat of the season as goals from Sam Clucas and Scott Hogan saw the Potters hit back after Andre Ayew’s first-minute opener.

Head coach Cooper felt Swansea had shown signs of building on that excellent start, but felt they had lost their way in a number of areas as the contest went on.

“We had a perfect start, you go a goal up and you should build on that and we did,” he said.

“We created other chances where we were good going forward, but for some reason we did not want to play forward, we did not want to break lines.

“We did not want to be brave enough in areas of the pitch to make a difference.

“We were a little bit negative with our height of the team. The back four were quite deep and we encouraged them to come on to us.

“When you encourage teams to come on to you, and let them have the ball in hurtful areas, then the inevitable will happen.

“But there were lots of things in our game that were not at the level required. That was only one aspect so it would not be right just to focus on that.

“I thought in the end we did not do enough to get a result from the game. We know why. We did not play to our identity. The reason we play a certain way is because we think it will win games.

“We did not do that today and we got the result as it was.”