The season is far from over for our under-18s with Head Coach Simon Clark having issued a renewed challenge for league silverware.
A gallant FA Youth Cup run came to an end in the fourth round at Bramall Lane, when hosts Sheffield United progressed following their single-goal victory.
However, attention returns to the Youth Alliance South East on Saturday morning, as Simon’s squad are caught up in a four-way battle for top spot with Luton, Sutton and Stevenage.
You can listen to everything Simon Clark had to say below.
“We’re still in a good position to win the league,” said Simon. “Silverware is one of our KPIs and we’re looking to do that.
“Academy Manager Michael Hamilton came into the dressing room afterwards and said exactly that. It’s been a good run and the Club have been brilliant about it. I want to say thank-you to the people who travelled up to support us. Craig Cope and Rob Tuvey were also here and that’s wonderful from our first-team staff.
“We’ve got Leyton Orient at the weekend. We’ll see how healthy we are. We’re off on Thursday, we’ll have a light day of training on Friday, and then prepare, as we look to win on Saturday and get back towards the top of the league.”
Forward Tom Wilson returned to the starting line-up, having missed the win over Blackburn Rovers due to an appendix operation, but there was also a late change just before kick-off to deal with.
“We lost Jake Lawrence in the warm-up,” explained Simon. “He’s had a little bit of a problem with his calf, and we had to bring Justin Clarke back in. We’d prepared for something else, and a different way, so it was a bit of a knock. We didn’t show that in the first half though - I thought we had good amounts of control.
“We’ve had a good cup run, we’ve come here as underdogs and quite rightly so, as we were against Blackburn. What we didn’t do was maximise our opportunities on this occasion."
Simon had this to say about the goal we conceded, deep into the second half: “When the ball goes in, and it bobbles in, I think off a deflection, you’re always disappointed. We had bodies around it and there’s always something that happens before that could have been dealt with better. That’s all I said to them in the dressing room afterwards.
“We’d started off really well. I thought we moved the ball, and we looked a reasonable threat. They changed at half-time and we were told they really got into them.
“They pressed another ten yards higher, and we struggled to get any rhythm into our game in the second half. We made a couple of changes, but we didn’t have those opportunities that change the game.”
Photos: Simon Davies (Pro Sports Images).