Under 18s beaten by Exeter
Saturday 12th December
Football League Youth Alliance
Oxford United 0
Exeter City 2
Andy Whing writes:
“Having done so well just a couple of days earlier we wanted to carry that on and make it two wins in a week, but we were unable to do so against a decent Exeter side who pass the ball around really well and were coming off the back of a good result themselves in the FA Youth cup against Bolton.
We played them in the youth cup earlier in the season and talked about the importance of defending set pieces but we conceded early when we blocked a corner but their lad scored the rebound.
We then conceded from our own corner. They countered with pace, we got back well enough and had two or three chances to get the ball away but it fell to them on the edge of the box and they scored to make it 2-0. You can say it was a good strike but really it was our own downfall after not clearing our lines
We brought on Lemar Graham, Charlie Tuttle and Aaron Heap and they added energy and gave us new impetus, but we couldn’t break a decent Exeter defence down. We never capitalised on our good play and I think there are lessons to be learnt.
If you look at the league table I think the draw box is empty so we need to work on our consistency rather than the win one lose one pattern that we have had in the first half of the season.
United
Stevens, Ricketts, Hayden, McCormack, C. Hawtin, J Graham (Tuttle 75), Humphreys (L Graham 60), Baptiste, Hartley, Napa (Heap 70), Hastings