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City leading 1-0 thanks to a Lloyd Humphries penalty with less than ten minutes to go.Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
That's how it finished. Good result and good for the Academy centre backs to keep a clean sheet too, presumably Humphries was helping them out again but its a confidence booster for them all the same.
For some reason, our FAW Youth Cup semi-final with Swansea is now being played at Llanelli's ground on Weds, March 6th.
https://www.swanseacity.com/news/faw...date-confirmed
The highlights of this game are up. I mentioned last week that I wasn't quite sure about Spence's fitness levels but his form is excellent.
https://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/card...video-archive/ (U18 highlights; Palace)
Lovely finish by Spence for the first goal and Sam Bowen's wasn't bad either - all done without any one in the eleven that I would call a specialist striker.
We had two of them (Griffiths & Isaak Davies) when we played Palace at home and lost 1-0, it's a funny old game. I remember texting my lad when I turned up to the Watford DVP game a while back saying it was going to be a long night because we haven't got a striker and we ended up winning 7-1, Man City didn't have one for the first half of our cup game with them but they seemed to manage ok. If you've got a number of players making runs from midfield and good enough passers to pick them out (Reynolds ball to Evans for the 3rd against Palace is a great example) then it must be pretty hard to deal with.
I'm sure most traditional British centreback types would much prefer to have a striker to mark for ninety minutes rather than not knowing how and when they would have someone to look after.
What are the first impressions of that Bolger we signed on loan?
He only came on for twenty minutes last week, I'm wary of saying he was an improvement on O'Keefe because you might think I'm damning him with faint praise but he slotted in well and contributed to a strong finish for us. I haven't seen his name mentioned with regards to yesterday's win but he played the 90 minutes and, presumably, played his part in the clean sheet.
It's an area we need to strengthen with Arter, Gunnarsson and Camarasa all likely to be leaving at the end of the season so let's hope this is leading somewhere positive. I like the look of Duffus at that level (but he seems to be made of glass), Humphries was excellent in a back three last week, Reynolds is impressing for the Academy, Spence is playing very well too but we really need one or two of these guys to push on now or its going to be an expensive rebuild in the summer. Too early to say whether Bolger is going to be the answer but the under-23s have two home games coming up so TOBW should be able to give us a better assessment of him soon.
Highlights of the under-23s win at Millwall here. Something tells me that Dan Martin missed Warnock's e-mail explaining what he expects from his full backs.
https://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/card...video-archive/ (U23 Highlights; Millwall)
You can't read too much into three or four minutes highlights, but that was like that Welsh Youth Cup match when Martin seemed to be directly involved in all ten of the goals we scored - he was, apparently, at the heart of all of our best attacking moves on Monday and a clean sheet suggests it wasn't at the cost of his defensive responsibilities.
I thought he was good against Coventry the week before as well.
Yes, he seems in a good run of form at the minute. I enjoyed his performance against Coventry, he was relentless. Even if the ball didn't get to him three or four times in a row he kept making the run and then, when he did get it, there was usually a decent end product.
He seems the kind of full back who'd thrive in both the unusual back three/four system that the Academy play and the more regular back three/five system that the DVP team have recently adopted so it's hardly surprising his performances have been so good of late. In fact, he should thrive in any back three variation- bar one, of course.
Just off to watch the Under 18s take on Coventry at Leckwith this morning, kick off is at 11.30.
3-3 draw, Kieron Evans equalising with seconds to go after good play from Sam Bowen. Sloppy and complacent from a few today, first time I've seen that this season. William Warnock started, on the left wing. I'm not sure if Warnock himself watched the first half but he settled down in front of me ready for the second only to find that William had been taken off at half time. Not his weekend.
Warnock was there for the first half, but I don't think Craig Bellamy was after the meeting last Monday that was supposed to let him know the result of the inquiry into the claims against him.
The under 18s got out of jail today because they fell away badly in the second half after dominating the first forty five minutes without being at their best. It seemed to me that some of our players looked tired and there wasn't much "snap" and pace to our passing - we seemed to think that all of the possession we had would eventually tire Coventry out, but it was all done so ponderously that the visitors looked the fitter team at the end for me.
My report on yesterday's game.
http://mauveandyellowarmy.net/
A good 3-0 win for a very young City Development team over QPR at Leckwith this afternoon.
http://mauveandyellowarmy.net/
Thanks for that, very encouraging.
Are we reading anything into Dan Martin's absence?
Any idea where Cameron Coxe is?
Highlights of the Coventry game here. Our first goal is a beauty, Pinchard is a good player (although slightly weak in the build up to their second). Sam Parsons got the second goal, I'm not sure why Spence got credited with it. You can see the last one properly now, great play by Bowen but it has to be a foul by Evans in the build up. I know it's a slip but he headbutts the guy in the leg, I'm not surprised the Coventry player goes racing after the ref as soon as the ball hits the net.
https://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/card...video-archive/ (U18 Highlights;Coventry City)
Warnock has been quick to drop Joe Bennett this season and I would have thought he would have been fuming at him for his, awful, careless free kick which led to Watford's second goal, but Cunningham would be the obvious replacement and I really couldn't see Martin jumping the queue so to speak when it came to left back selection. I'd say it would be possible that he was on stand by because of injuries to one or both of the senior left backs, so there may be a very slight chance of him being on the bench tonight, but no more than that.
He was at yesterday's game and there were no obvious signs of him being injured. He was sent off fairly recently, although I would have thought he would have served any suspension for that by now.
Believe it or believe it not, that was my feeling at the time, but when you get home, start to write your piece on the game and see that it's being reported as being scored by someone else, you think you must have got it wrong - I'll put a note saying Parsons scored it on the blog now.
Bowen did well for the third goal.
The highlights are up.
https://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/card...video-archive/ (u23 highlights; QPR).
It will be interesting to see how the games get prioritised next week with the Academy boys fighting on three fronts. League games against third placed Ipswich and third place (in the northern section) Notts Forest on successive Saturdays with a Monday night DVP game against Sheffield United and Wednesday's FAW Youth Cup semi with Swansea in between. A DVP game at Hull two days after Forest as well.
Although I'd like to see us winning a league, I think the Under 18 squad has shown already that they are the strongest side out of the ten who compete in their division and it seems to me that getting them playing against older opponents should be a priority. That said, Sion Spence started the games on Saturday and Monday and Trystan Jones came on so early in the Development team match that he may as well have done - at that age, playing three or four times in a week shouldn't be too much of a hardship as long as it wasn't week in, week out.
Based on previous experience, City usually want to field their strongest possible side for Youth Cup games or the latter stages of the FAW tournament, so I think the match with the jacks will be given some sort of priority with the question for me being, will the likes of Martin and new signings Bolger and Williams start, because I'm pretty sure they are all eligible for the game.
The Academy have put out their strongest side today and I assume they will Wednesday too so Monday's DVP line-up will be interesting, not sure why they didn't postpone that one.
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