Blameless Chelsea loanee Levi Colwill backed after Huddersfield Town own goal in play-off final

Carlos Corberan has backed Chelsea loanee Levi Colwill to shrug off the disappointment of conceding the own goal that allowed Nottingham Forest to claim victory in the Championship play-off final.

The Huddersfield Town centre-back was blameless in the goal as he attempted to put his leg in front of what he expected would be a Ryan Yates shot shortly before half time at Wembley. The Forest man did not make contact with the cross into the box, however, and Colwill’s block therefore ended up deflecting into the top corner past a helpless Lee Nicholls.

“I think if he doesn’t put his foot there maybe the midfielder would have scored the goal too, so I don’t think it was an easy action for him to defend better. I think he was doing what he had to do,” Corberan said.

“Unfortunately it’s true that we could have balanced the last line a little bit better, but these things happen in football. It happened to him when he’s 19 years old because he’s playing in a final when he’s 19 years old, because he deserves to be in a final at his age.”

That was to prove to be the only goal of the game – though both Harry Toffolo and Lewis O’Brien were denied clear penalty shouts despite VAR being in effect for the game.

Asked for his assessment of the match as a whole, Corberan said: “I think the game was really really really balanced, really equal.

“We played two halves in different ways: in the first one we tried to be more solid in defence and aggressive in defence, because I know that every time you try to be aggressive about Nottingham Forest they start to attack you with more spaces between your defenders and the keeper, and they have very fast, quick players to attack these spaces and explode these types of situations.

“For me the team