Cooperman is hero once again for Lions

JAKE COOPER continued his incredible scoring record against Sheffield United with a thumping second-half header.

No current Championship player has more goals against the Blades than the Millwall centre-back, who notched his fifth in six games.

With Paul Heckingbottom’s side on a miserly run of five games without conceding, it was inevitable that Cooper would be the man to decide this tight clash of few chances.

He hit a scorching

25-yard winner in the Lions’ 2-1 win at Bramall Lane in October.

Cooper made it four wins on the bounce for the first time in the Gary Rowett era when he rose unmarked at the far post to power home Jed Wallace’s

61st-minute free-kick. It was the first goal the Blades had conceded in nine hours.

Lions boss Rowett said: “Coops certainly enjoys playing against Sheffield United.

“He scored a

25-yarder earlier in the season to win us the game and today he scored a towering header.

“When he gets up around the back of defenders there are not many players who head it the way Coops does with his size.

The Lions are now just five points of the play-offs and four behind United, who dropped to seventh.

Blades boss Heckingbottom, who had made four changes to the team which beat Blackburn in midweek, admitted his side lacked zip.

He said: “There was not much in the game. We would have taken a 0-0 the way we played.”

MILLWALL: Bialkowski 7; Hutchinson 6 (Ballard (63rd) 7), Cooper 8, M Wallace

7; McNamara 7, Mitchell 7, Saville

7, Malone 7; J Wallace 7, Bennett 5 (Evans (16th) 6), Burey 7 (Lovelace

90th)

SHEFFIELD UNITED: Foderingham

6; Gordon 6 (Berg (71st) 6), Egan 6, Robinson 6; Baldock 6, Hourihane 5 (Fleck 87th), Norwood 7, NorringtonDavies 6; Ndiaye 6 (Gibbs-White (56th)

6); McBurnie 6, Sharp 6

STAR MAN: Jake Cooper

REF: M Salisbury 7