Adam Asghar has delivered his recent assessment of his Under-18 side, who remain top of the U18 Premier League after defeating Blackburn Rovers 3-1 in Lancashire last weekend.
The youngsters have taken 19 points from eight games to sit three points clear of Manchester City in the division – who we face on Saturday (11:30am) at the Academy of Light.
“We performed well against Blackburn last Saturday – they made it really difficult for us in the first 10 minutes by pressing very high,” Asghar said.
“That was a good challenge for the boys to overcome, implementing our style of play and finding a solution. We then dominated the rest of the first half and went onto score three good goals in the second half.
“Coming up against different styles and shapes is a very important education for the boys. It forces us to find different solutions, and I’m really pleased that the players have taken a lot of accountability and initiative. Teams will analyse us, like we do with opponents, so we have to be flexible and find ways to be effective with the ball.”
Following Saturday’s hosting of City, Asghar and the young Lads next face third-placed Liverpool and fourth-placed Wolves in league action. An FA Youth Cup visit to Swansea City also comes before Christmas, with a date and time to be officially confirmed.
“The next three league games will of course be very important in the course of our season, but whichever opponent we face, we just want to implement our style as best we can.
“It can be easy to get caught up in names, sizes of clubs and academies, but the main message is to look to be the best version of ourselves in every game.
“We’re excited by the challenge of facing Man City this weekend, and they should be excited to play us as we should be a challenge for teams. We appreciate it’s going to be a great run of games to look forward to, but the challenge is now to continue what a fantastic start to the season the boys have had.”
Asghar also oversaw a youthful side in the U17 Premier League Cup on Tuesday, which lost 5-1 to Middlesbrough – the team included a number of trialists and U16 players on the day, which left the Lead U18 Coach remaining encouraged.
“For me, the U17 games are great as they enable a number of different factors to look at. We had a couple of players coming back from injury, a couple of trialists involved, and we made a conscious decision to use that Middlesbrough game to experiment more.
“There were still plenty of positives – we used the ball in the right way, but we lost cheap goals which were probably to be expected, due to the circumstances we had.
“For me, it’s just about learning from that, getting younger lads involved and overseeing the boys against tougher, slightly older opponents.”