United defender Liam Cooper is hoping to take the positives from Saturday’s display at Burnley into Tuesday night’s trip to Birmingham City.

Cooper was part of the United side narrowly beaten by the league leaders at Turf Moor over the weekend as Scott Arfield’s goal inside the opening minute proved to be the match winner.

Several good chances fell for the visitors as Steve Evans urged his side forward in search of an equaliser, with Chris Wood twice coming close during a dominant second-half showing, but Burnley managed to hold on and extend their unbeaten run to 18 Championship matches.

Evans’ men now travel to St Andrew’s on Tuesday looking to return to winning ways after four games without victory, and Cooper is keen for that to be the case after seeing good signs at Turf Moor.

“It’s never nice to lose games – the boys are hurting,” he said.

“But we’ve got to brush ourselves down because it’s the Championship and you’ve got another game in three days. We’ve got to be ready for that.

“Tuesday is another game and we’ve got to look forward to that now.

“We can take positives from the game at Burnley – there were a lot and I think everyone saw that. Hopefully the fans have seen it as well.

“The boys were devastated, I thought we played very well.

“We had a good couple of chances and we were disappointed not to come away with anything.

“But we gave ourselves a big task after conceding so early – you can’t do that when you’re playing away to the league leaders.

“It cost us on Saturday, but the positive is that we put in a good performance and were the better team against Burnley.”

Asked about United’s aims for the final month of the season, Cooper added: “We’ve just got to go out there and be professional and try to finish as high as we can.

“That’s what the boys want to do. We’ll be looking to do that with a result on Tuesday.

“Birmingham are another strong team – it’s a hard place to go, but we’re looking forward to it.”