Liam Cooper hopes to celebrate his new three-year contract with a place in the Tigers' starting line-up at Portsmouth on Saturday.

Cooper signed a new deal on Wednesday and with Kamil Zayatte set to miss Saturday's game through injury, the young defender is hoping City's new Football Management Consultant Iain Dowie will turn to him to fill the gap.

"I want to try and cement my place in the first team," said Cooper, who made his second Premier League appearance last weekend when he came on to replace the injured Zayatte against Arsenal.

"Hopefully I can play a big part in us securing our Premier League status in the next few weeks. To do that, we need to show the kind of spirit we showed against Arsenal last weekend.

"Portsmouth is a 'crunch' game for us and we'll be treating it a bit like a cup final. We'll have to be prepared to put our bodies on the line to get a result."

With a new man in charge, Cooper says that every player will be out to impress in training and in games as the season heads towards its climax.

"Everybody will be out to impress. You've got to try and make an impression and hopefully I'll be able to do that to make the team on Saturday.

"Day in, day out we try to perform to our best on the training field and we'll keep doing that. Everybody will be knocking on the door wanting to be in the team."