Rhyl FC 1 Manchester City U18s 0 - Match Report

City Fail at Rhyl for First Time

U18s Pre-Season Friendly
Saturday 2^nd August 2014 

City: Pistol(GK), Assiana, Wassi(Oliver), Oseni, Oliver(Humphries), Holland(Kongolo), Bullock(Dilrosun), Wood, Doherty(Buckley,) Samuelson(Brooks), Nemane
Goals: None
Unused: Albinson(GK)

City’s first fairly local domestic pre-season friendly was the usual venue of Rhyl FC and due to other matches elsewhere meant that City brought a fairly limited squad down the M56 and so it was not too much of a surprise that it was City’s poorest display at the Belle Vue Ground and the reason that they lost this annual pre-season fixture for the first time to a first half goal.

That locality also meant that it was our first chance to see the young blues with a few new faces that we had not seen before and unfortunately the two players that started were amongst the players that look like they will struggle to get many starts for City in the U18s league games next season.

The only goal of the game came in the eighth minute when City failed to clear a ball into the box sufficiently as it fell to Rob Hughes and he cut inside and fired a shot into the far top corner from the edge of the area.

The first half seemed to be dominated by the distribution errors made by both keepers as their kicking and throwing regularly found opposition players.

The second half only appeared to improve in play for City when the substitutions were made and there seemed a lot more balance to the team and possession improved greatly but unfortunately lacking a natural striker meant those half chances that were created did not really trouble the Rhyl goalkeeper to at least get an equalizer.

City again travel to North Wales; this time Wrexham AFC at their Racecourse Ground this Tuesday evening where a stronger squad hopefully will look like they are more ready for the start of the season than they have done today.

Posted in Academy Match Reports by Gavin Cooper/Andrew Waldon.