Forthcoming Fixtures

Due to Alex Henshall's injury in the game against Everton last week City were forced to make a change to last week's starting line up and so Conor Sellars started his first game for City. With no recognised forward available for City the game was always going to be tight and played through the midfield. The drawn result came about from a great first half long range strike from Adam Drury but City  were pegged back in the second half by a Barnsley equaliser, when a ball was not cleared around the edge of the area.

City started the game quite slowly and Barnsley had quite a lot of the ball but were unable to really worry City's defence. City started to get their passing game together after about quarter of an hour and they started to press the Barnsley defence back and so as the game wore on to nearly half an hour Paul Clowes picked the ball up and he passed it onto his house mate from Grimbsy, Adam Drury and he took a couple of touches before letting fly from outside the area with a shot that cannoned off the inside of the top of the post and into the back of the goal.

City continued to press the Barnsley defence and look for another goal to give that safety net and it looked like that might happen as their defence seemed a little all over the place and their goalkeeper's handling was not the best but it was Barnsley  themselves who could have taken the lead as the first half drew to a close when a shot from about twenty five yards hit a City defender and looped up into the top right corner that had James Wood scrambling back and making a great leap to tip the ball behind from out of the very top corner of the goal; a trully great save.

Unfortunately for City things were not quite working for them at the start of the second half when things were not quite happening for Sellars and Evans in the midfield that ,were in the first half, and so Barnsley gained more belief and forced the indecisiveness in City and so when a ball was not fully cleared in and around the edge of the area the Barnsley player was able to go through into the area and slot the ball past Wood with a low shot.

City seemed to step up after this set back and four minutes later the play came down the left hand side and Bradley Robinson played into the area before attempting to cut inside but the Barnsley defender took a clear swipe at Bradley and clearly caught him and brought him down about ten yards away from the referee who spread his arms to wave play away bizarrely.

City made a couple of changes to be more attack minded but still without a recognised forward they just did not have that spark up front and despite Robinson being City's focal point they were never really able to create another clear chance on goal and so City lost the chance to keep the pressure on Everton and Liverpool for the group divisional title.

Team:

Wood, Coulson, Plummer, Kennedy, Meppen-Walter, Clowes, Drury, Evans, Robinson, Sellars (Huws 75), King(Hiwula 65)

Subs: Halsall (GK), K Skosgrud, T Skogsrud

As is the norm for academy Under 16 games from this stage of the season, a side containing a number of players promoted from the Under 15's were 2-1 winners over Barnsley