City Fail to Scale Mountain

Manchester City Youth 2 - 0 Liverpool FC Youth

Liverpool win 3-2 on Aggregate


It was perhaps a step too far for City's young guns last night. It really showed our problem in clawing back that big deficit by the fact that it was a wonder strike that got us back in the tie. The inclusion of Micah Richards was a huge advantage to City as he shone out on the field of play like Wayne Rooney did when he singled handedly ripped the City team apart on that Winter's evening five seasons ago at Goodison Park; but even Micah could not make up such a big gulf in the scoreline.

The main problem that this youth team suffers from is that neither Michael Johnson nor Paul Marshall make well timed runs into the box. Both players are of a good standard at this level, but by not making those runs, they might be denying themselves the opportunity of pushing on to become great premiership players. Paul is two years younger than Michael so is way down the learning curve and has more time on his hands to develop. Michael has improved greatly this season as I really was not impressed with him as a player prior to last Autumn, an academy game away to Leeds United I can point as his lowest and since then he has continued to improve. He states that Steven Gerrard is a hero of his; well he should look at Steven's play at the way that his commitment to make that extra effort to get into the box at all times and still track back is a masterclass of midfield play.

City dominated the play with their new 4-3-3 formation and a strong defence helped to produce the groundwork from which to build on. Johnson and Marshall played the easy balls and Karl Moore, Chedwin Evans and Kelvin Etuhu making the runs down the flanks, it was easy to see why City were encamped in Liverpool's half of the field for most of the game and why Liverpool's goalkeeper, David Roberts, was kept very busy.

Of course Roberts was powerless to stop Daniel Sturridge's thirty yard wonder strike into the top left hand corner and again Daniel struck his second goal well when the ball came across the box from the initial free kick by Johnson. As the result shows though, although it was a great performance by the team, they just failed in the cutting edge of belief in driving forward from all positions when time after time the balls came across the box and no one was there to meet it. Had the score been five or six nil to City you could in no way argue that that would have been a fair reflection of the way the game panned out.

As Jim Cassell and his great staff always state, the real aim for an academy is to produce players that can go on and be fully recognised first team players for the club, and as it stands you can clearly state that at least half of these players in this youth team have a very good chance of achieving this and with more focus of loaning players out as they grow older this objective will be met to a greater extent than it is at the moment at this club.

The quality that is coming through from the U16s and the fact that our youth team has many players that are eligible for next year's youth cup that I would be very surprised if we did not win the Cup in the next three years.


City: Matthewson(GK), Obeng, Logan, Richards(Capt.), Breen, Marshall, C Evans, Johnson, Etuhu, Sturridge, Moore.

Att: 9,115


MotM(Excl. Richards): Logan - after a poor display at Anfield - his performance was immense at times with some great last ditch tackles