The club captain is aware of the reaction the result will have on some Leeds United fans

Ethan Ampadu accepts there will be “reactionary” feelings from the Leeds United fan base after Saturday’s defeat to Bournemouth but insists the squad themselves will be the most critical.

Supporters have aired their grievances with the defeat on the back of recent performances, with no wins in five games and just two goals scored across this period.

Saturday’s 2-0 loss signalled United’s second defeat of the campaign but just two of the nine fixtures so far have been ended in a win.

Leeds had the most possession, higher pass completion rate and more final third passes during the game but ultimately mustered just 0.67xG.

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Leeds had a wonderfully-worked goal chalked off due to Dominic Calvert-Lewin handling the ball over the line on 12 minutes but otherwise managed to get off just three shots inside the box - the worst return since the international break.

The game turned on James Trafford’s stark 31st-minute error, when the goalkeeper passed the ball to a Bournemouth player while inside his own box, allowing Julian Kluivert to set up Evanilson to fire home and give the hosts life.

Ampadu says the mood inside the camp remains relatively upbeat but understands the outside reaction amid the winless run.

He told LUTV: “Whenever you go away in the Premier League and go 1-0 down it’s very tough. But I think we’ve shown in the last we can come back and we had full belief we would do again.

"Just unfortunately we didn’t. There is still a lot of positivity around, we have a long way to go. Sometimes you can have days like this.

"Obviously it hurts at the moment. Everyone will be very reactionary, albeit we take the criticism but we are the first ones to look at what we could do better.”

More generally, he added: “It’s absolutely frustrating. It didn't really feel like a 2-0 game, but it is at the end of the day so we have to look at what we can do better.

"They only had a couple of chances and they put them in the back of the net. Maybe as a team, as a whole team, we can be better.

“We knew they play with a lot of intensity, and so do we. So we wanted to make sure that we matched that. We wanted to win that battle and we knew that this game was going to come down to small chances.

“Maybe on another day the game would go a bit differently, but unfortunately today it wasn't to be. So, yeah, like I said at the start, we have to look back on it and see what we can do better.”