Play-off place secured with comfortable win
Barclays Premier Under 18 League
Tuesday 2nd April 2014
City: O'Brien, Oliver, Oseni, Adarabioyo (Wassi),Smith-Brown, Byrne (Holland), Intima, Celina, Ambrose (Garcia), Boadu, Nemane
Goals: Boadu(2), Ambrose
Unused: Albinson (GK), Samuelsen
City secured their play-off place on Wednesday afternoon, with what was perhaps one of their easiest victories away from home this season.
City travelled down to the West Midlands for a fixture against Wolves that had been twice postponed. Chaos in the area due to a hole in the M6 motorway had meant that we were held up arriving and just got to the game in time to see Thierry Ambrose score his 19th academy goal of the season. That was added to by two second half goals from Denzeil Boadu to ensure City would be taking part in the end of season play-offs.
Wolves despite their first team plying their trade in the third tier of football decided quite wisely to maintain their tier one academy status by keeping the higher levels of investments required for the status. However Wolves have released most of their second year scholars and so the team at present is still developing and it showed as they offered little or no threat to Billy O’Brien’s goal.
City’s opening goal in the ninth minute when the ball came into the area after good build up play by Bersant Celina and Jorge Intima and the ball came to a sort of fifty fifty and Boadu got the ball and slid in and it rolled forward which found Thierry Ambrose who fired a hard right foot shot low past the goalkeeper to make it 1-0.
Despite dominating possession City were perhaps not at their cohesive best and were not creating too many chances. The best ones fell to Intima where his first chance was well saved after very good approach play by Denzeil Boadu and Intima’s other chance came when some excellent one touch football from City came to Ashley Smith-Brown on the left and he crossed in but Intima failed to keep the effort on target.
The second half City stepped up there play in the opening twenty minutes or so but it was not that long when they had doubled their lead after again one touch football led to the ball coming out to Smith-Brown well up the pitch on the left and he passed back to Boadu who close control and dribbling were excellent as he had the wolves defenders twisting and turning running into the area before firing across the keeper and the ball lodged itself into the rear stanchion in the forty ninth minute.
Jason Wilcox could clearly see that City were well in control of this match and so started to make some changes and that slightly gave Wolves a bit more momentum but despite creating a couple of good chances their finishes were pretty woeful and Billy O’Brien was mainly a spectator in events.
City continued to press and could have gone three nil up in the final ten minutes when sixteen year old Aaron Nemane making a first start for the U18s in over a season forced the play forward and dribbled the ball really well and again the Wolves defence were on the back foot but unfortunately for the young French born Blackley lad the goalkeeper made a very good save from the shot that he created.
Nemane however played his part along with substitute Manu Garcia who pressured the Wolves player on the left as they tried to play the ball away in stoppage time but that led to him playing a back pass that failed to have enough weight on it and Boadu was there to pounce and run off to the goalkeeper before cheekily knocking the ball past him away from goal and him running past him goal side in a similar move to that Pele world cup one but on the other side of the goal and then he was quick enough to reach to the ball before the defender and fire into the empty net.
So an end of season play-off awaits for the young blues against one of Spurs, West Ham or Fulham or had been City’s victors in the FA Youth Cup earlier this year. Next up for City however was the long trip across to East Anglia to play Norwich City away.
Posted in Academy Match Reports by Gavin Cooper/Andrew Waldon.