Matt Grimes insists he will “take one for the team” and risk yellow or red cards in future in order to keep points on the board for Swansea City.
The Swans captain says he will gamble on the punishments by committing a foul if he is in the position to deny opponents late on in a match.
Grimes has claimed he should have pulled back Nottingham Forest striker Lewis Grabban at the weekend in the build-up to Forest’s 85th minute only goal of the game at the Liberty Stadium.
The striker escaped the midfielder’s attention in a breakaway, after the visitors defended a corner, and set up Alfa Semedo, whose goal handed Swansea their first defeat of the season.
The Swansea skipper said: “It’s not a nice way to concede and I probably should have taken one for the team.
“I’ve watched it back and it crossed my mind – I should have pulled him back – but I wasn’t sure in the heat of the moment.
“But if I get into that position again I won’t make the same mistake twice.
“You learn a lot more from defeat than victory and we’ll have to have a look at what went wrong.”
Swansea’s defeat enabled Leeds to go back to the top of the Championship thanks to their 2-0 victory at Barnsley on Sunday.
For the Swans, it was manager Steve Cooper’s first defeat since he took charge in the summer and they must now look to recover quickly before visiting Bristol City – who are fourth in the table – on Saturday.
“You can’t let one defeat become two or three in this league so we need to bounce back,” added Grimes.
“It will be a tough game in Bristol but confidence is still high. If you’d given us this position at the start of the season then we would have taken it, but it’s just about how we learn from the defeat. It’s our first one, so we’ll learn a lot.
“We didn’t see the real Swansea City. People who have been coming to our games will know that wasn’t our best performance.
“But we’re not going to be at our best every week, so we need to find a way to win most games when you’re not at our best. We’ll draw a line under this and move on.”
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