Did anyone see it? 0-2 defeat apparently.
I watched the whole game. This is not the first time that I've thought the U21 team under Ehiogu does not seem to play the coherent zip zip press press pass and move football as coherently as most of the development sides of ours that I've watched over the last three or four years.
I'm not sure how much of that is down to Ehiogue, he's been a bit unlucky in that this group is a very transitional one and lacking the quality of input that players like Carroll, Bentaleb, Onomah, Pritchard, Kane brought all at the same time. Even Oduwa is out on loan.
The group is very CM heavy at the moment and we ended up with Amos (right footed CM) at LB, Walkes (who I'd always seen more as a deep lying CM) playing as a "10" with Winks and Lesniak in CM2.
Amos is a good Cm but just didn't really offer the balance of a proper left sided player, as a result everything was lop sided as the excellent KWP is constantly involved in the game down the right, and also had the vastly more experienced Townsend was on that side too.
Coulthirst played the lone striker role, and though he was lively and worked hard, he didn't really have the hold up physical fulcrum qualities of say a Kane, or the wit of Harrison.
Like I said, I think this group is a bit transitional. We have some really good players who have just graduated on from it, and some really promising players in the younger groups who I think we'll see fast tracked soon, in the mean time I remain unsure as to the coaching abilities of Ehiogu.
That said, this wasn't a terrible performance, the first half was quite even and they scored a lucky free kick at the very end of the half that was one of those whipped free kicks from wide angle that evades everyone and ends up bouncing and zooming in the far corner. We then utterly dominated the second half trying to eek out a goal - without creating much of quality - and were caught by a sucker punch counter attack.
I still rue the loss of Inglethorpe who I think was an excellent youth coach and should not been allowed to go.