City's Comfortable Opening Day Victory
Barclays U18s Premier League
Saturday 16th August 2014
City: Albinson(GK), Tattum, Humphries, Oseni, Adarabayo(Capt.), Holland, Nemane, Celina(Garcia), Buckley, Boadu, Samuelson(Faour).
Goals: Boadu(24), Celina(33), Buckley(56), Faour(67).
Unused Subs: McCulloch(GK), Oliver, Wood.
Our normal trip up to Blackburn Rover’s Brockhall training ground for the academy game is usually in the meat of the season and as such the weather is usually pretty gloomy; not what you would expect from the opening game of the season in the middle of August. However the outside windy cold an overcast conditions did not have any bearing on how the game panned out in favour of City as they won comfortable four one with goals from Denzeil Boadu, Bersant Celina , Isaac Buckley, Zacharias Faour.
City controlled the tempo from the start and were passing the ball around well and had it not been for Callum Williams in the Blackburn goal and some blocks from their defenders City could have taken an earlier lead than they did.
The deadlock was however broken in the twenty fourth minute when Boadu’s quick and tricky feet were able for him to evade the defenders as he ran through into the box and slotted the ball low past Williams.
City had to wait less than ten minutes to see their lead double when again it was the neat footwork of Boadu that had the Blackburn defence and when he sold the defender the dummy and tried to go past and around him the defender brought Denzeil down only just on the edge of the area. Norwegian Bersant Celina took responsibility to step up and take the free kick which he duly curled beautifully over the wall and into the corner of the goal to make it two nil to City.
City continued to press for the remaining near quarter of hour of the half but as they are still building up fitness the sharpness you could see was tiring and the break was probably well needed in the end.
That little bit of fatigue in the legs was evident right from the start of the second half as City allowed Blackburn far more time on the ball and the fullbacks were able to get much further up the pitch and down the flanks and so it was not a great surprise that they were able to pull a goal back in the early exchanges of the second half.
That goal might have given the City players a little wake up that they needed as they started playing much better from their kick off and played mainly in the Blackburn half and so when they stepped up the play that little bit more and a through ball on the right that drifted away was latched on by Buckley who still had the pace to take it past the keeper and power a shot past him that went across the goal and into the far corner to restore City’s two goal lead.
City put the result beyond doubt when Boadu played a very good through ball after dispossessing the defender into the path of substitute Faour and in similar style to Buckley only from the left side slotted the ball past Williams into the far corner of the goal to make it four one to City.
City then brought Spanish youth international Manu Garcia on and the team started to play possession football that he was at the heart of and the remainder of the game felt like a training game as at any time City looked like they could go on but were not duly putting that extra stress on their body so early in the season as the game was already won.
Next up for City is a home game against the usual very decent Sunderland academy team who will give City a much sterner test than Blackburn did.
Posted in Academy Match Reports by Gavin Cooper/Andrew Waldon.