Youth/loan update – August 2013

Loan update

Our loan players made their first starts of the season, with Hall, Luongo, Pritchard and Mason all playing as Swindon lost 1-0 at Peterborough. Mason and Luongo both received post-match plaudits and Mason was actually unlucky not to score with a good effort that rattled the crossbar. Hall unfortunately was arguably at fault for the only goal of the game, whilst Pritchard mostly struggled to get into the game.

They were then all involved in the 1-0 Capital Cup win against Torquay in midweek. Mason, Hall and Pritchard started, with Luongo replacing Mason at half time – it was reportedly pre-arranged that each would play a half. Pritchard won and missed a penalty, with caretaker manager Mark Cooper saying post-game:

We’ve got many technical players but Alex Pritchard was the nominated penalty taker. He took about ten yesterday morning and put them in the other corner but fair play he kept going.

It’s always worth noting comments from forums, and these were particularly interesting after Saturday’s game:

I reckon we have a gem in Mason, he was class throughout & I thought he & Harley played well.

Was most impressed with Mason this afternoon and Luongo looked good as the game developed.
I was a bit disappointed with Pritchard; he’s been billed as the class act but seemed to get muscled out far too much today. Hopefully, a few games on he’ll start to shine.

Hall. 6. Started like stevie wonder, pity the lad though as it was chop him and red card, or let him fire over for the goal, unfortunately it went in, got better though and looked good 2nd half.

Luongo. 8. Star man, always knew what to do with the ball.

Mason. 7. very quiet 1st half, but grew into the game , and sooo unlucky with the crossbar effort.

Pritchard. 6.5. Anonymous 1st half, but looked very tricky and clever 2nd. He’ll be good no doubt of that.

(With thanks to zin from The Fighting Cock forum for gathering these quotes.)

Meanwhile, Bongani Khumalo played in Doncaster Rovers’ 3-1 home defeat to Blackpool and scored the only goal if the game in their 1-0 cup win against Rochdale.

Adam Smith was an unused sub for Derby in their opening day draw with Blackburn Rovers, but played the full 90 against Oldham Athletic in the Capital One cup.

Eurofoot

An U19 squad that was mostly made up of players much younger than that finished 3rd in the Eurofoot tournament in Oostduinkerke, Belgium last weekend.

Our squad list for the tournament was as follows:

1 Luke McGee, 2/09/95
2 Channing Campbell-Young, 18/09/96
3 Alexander McQueen, 24/03/95
4 Cameron Carter-Vickers, 31/12/97
5 Christian Maghoma, 8/11/97
6 Conor Ogilvie, 14/02/96
7 Anton Walkes, 8/02/97
8 Filip Lesniak, 14/05/96
9 Joe Pritchard, 10/09/96
10 William Miller, 8/06/96
11 Josh Onomah, 27/04/97
12 Luke Amos, 23/02/97
13 Harry Voss, 11/01/97
14 Emmanuel Sonupe, 21/03/96
15 Anthony Georgiou, 24/02/97
16 Kyle Walker-Peters, 13/04/97
17 Daniel Akindayini, 25/10/95
18 Darren McQueen, 8/05/95

Players must be born between January 1 1995 and December 31 1996, to be eligible to participate.

It’s worth noting that Harry Winks (who may well have travelled had he been fit) was, I believe, unavailable due to injury.

Participating teams are split into two groups, which this year was as follows:

Group A

West Ham Utd
Club Brugge (Belgium)
AA Gent (Belgium)
KV Oostende (Belgium)
FC Utrecht (The Netherlands)
RSC Anderlecht (Belgium)

Group B

Tottenham Hotspur
Valenciennes FC (France)
FC Nordsjaelland (Denmark)
Cercle Brugge (Belgium)
Standard Liege (Belgium)
SV Zulte-Waregem (Belgium)

We started with a 0-0 draw against Valenciennes, before beating FC Nordsjaelland 4-0, with the goals credited to Walker-Peters, D McQueen, Georgiou & Akindayini.

A 1-0 win over Zulte Waregem (with William Miller getting the goal) and goalless draws against Cercle Brugge and Standard Liege meant that we completed the group stages unbeaten.

We had an unfortunate end to our semi-final against West Ham whereby goalkeeper Harry Voss dislocated his shoulder, and so centre back Connor Ogilvie had to go in goal for a penalty shoot-out, which we lost 5-4 (Filip Lesniak, Emmanuel Sonupe, Akindayini and Alex McQueen all scored their penalties).

We beat Anderlecht 2-0 in the third/fourth play-off, with cousins Alex and Darren McQueen grabbing the goals to secure third place.

Manager, John McDermott said after the tournament:

We had five clean sheets in a row, fantastic, but we were a little hit and miss in front of goal and that proved our downfall in the end.

We had two Under-16 central defenders (Cameron Carter-Vickers, Chris Maghoma) who I was pleased with, Filip Lesniak and Alex McQueen had outstanding tournaments, Luke McGee was goalkeeper of the tournament, so they were all positives.

Under-21 season commences

Tonight our Under-21s play Chelsea at their home ground – the Recreation Ground in Aldershot.

Our young professionals warmed up for the season with a convincing 5-0 win against Cambridge City in a joint Testimonial for City manager Gary Roberts and central defender Lee Chaffey. The goals came through Bentaleb, two from Falque, and particularly spectacular strikes from Ryan Fredericks and Cristian Ceballos. The team was as follows:

Miles
Fredericks Ball Stewart Ward
Bentaleb Falque Lameiras
Ceballos Coulthirst McEvoy

Half-time changes:

Vigouroux for Miles.
A McQueen for Stewart.
McEneff for Bentaleb.
D McQueen for McEvoy.

Stay tuned for a report on tonight’s game, and follow me for Twitter for live updates.