Originally Posted by
Loramski
I made it down for the second half today and it was a pretty interesting 45 minutes. Very much the proverbial game of two halves, or half of two quarters in this case, as we were taking a hiding to start with but came back into it with a Cian Ashford led revival.
I haven't seen much youth stuff lately so I'm not sure what formation the Academy have been playing but it was four at the back today with a midfielder sitting just in front which I believe is what the under-23s did on Tuesday. Whether there's a significance to this for the first team we'll see tomorrow but it didn't seem to be working too well initially as the mishmash of central midfielders, number tens and a striker struggled to string anything together on the rare occasions we got the ball.
It was only a matter of time before Bristol City scored and when they did it came from us messing up as we tried to play out of defence. Heads dropped and it didn't look like there was any way back but Ashford, who hadn't seemed totally engaged in the process up till then, came alive and after some neat link-up play won a penalty which he confidently converted.
We could easily have gone on to win it then. Ashford set up Nyakuwha, who'd just appeared from the under-16s game as City123 pointed out, for a great chance but the keeper saved it with his legs. Ashford himself got behind the defence after a nice return ball from Hughes but was flagged offside which angered him and looked like a poor decision from where I was sitting (80 yards behind play and on the other side of the pitch). We were playing some good stuff now and Ashford was at the heart of most of it, he looks to have bags of talent and a good footballing brain. I would've expected him to be playing more under-23 games by now, not sure what's happened there.
To be fair, Bristol did rally at the end and created some good chances themselves but a draw was about fair from what I'd seen. The system looked like work in progress, confidence didn't seem too high and only some great blocks and last ditch defending had kept us in the game when we were under pressure but there was enough there to offer some encouragement.