A 3-1 defeat today for our U18 sounds a convincing loss. Sheffield Wednesday deserved their victory overall, but our team shouldn’t be disheartened. This is a very young U18 side this season. We’ve lost a number of last season’s key players, rightly promoted upwards, we were missing a couple more through injury (notably Yori Griffith) and we are going to get results like these until our new squad finds its feet.
Once more, we were a smaller, lighter group than our opponents (even when Wednesday made substitutions, they replaced big players with bigger players). Jack Fanning aside, the majority of our team is still maturing and growing. The good news is that, when we are on our game, we play really well and the players will be learning throughout.
We continued with a 3-4-2-1 formation: Kit Margetson; Arthur Parker, Seb Dabrowski, Jack Fanning; Josh Pescatore (sub Thomas Searle 77m), Callum Deacon (captain), Jacob Cook, Caio Ifans; Thomas Woodward, Ramon Rees-Siso (sub Bobo Evans 89m); Rohan Davies (sub Sammy Henia- Kamau 61m). Unused: Teodor Minchev, Ewan Griffiths.
We created one or two of our own mishaps from the off, which didn’t help with early confidence, but managed to survive. Wednesday had a very adaptable formation, full backs pressing forward eagerly and forwards at mostly a physical and height advantage over our defenders. Our play was fractured, Callum Deacon looked comfortable on the ball, but we created nothing of note while battling to gain a first half foothold and withstanding visiting attacks.
Getting to half-time at 0-0 felt like an achievement, but we conceded seconds into the 2nd half when right back Rodrigues found some space, got a ball over that one of his colleagues cleverly stepped over to allow centre forward Moses to finish from around the penalty spot.
A little surprisingly, we managed to get level 3 minutes later when a probing deep cross from Pescatore found Ifans, whose header bobbled around in front of the Wednesday goal before Woodward slammed it home.
This presaged a purple patch for us, our midfield started functioning creatively, our wingmen looked menacing and we created a number of half-chances as the rain poured down.
Although Wednesday looked on the rocks for a period, they rode it out, conjured a couple of breaks, missed a couple of chances – including one very good save by Margetson – before getting a stroke of luck 15 minutes from the end when Woodward was penalised for handball in the area. Moses confidently finished to put the Owls 2-1 up.
We huffed and puffed, pressed hard, made a couple of substitutions, but couldn’t breach the Wednesday backguard again.
Thornton got Wednesday’s 3rd with a smashing first time effort from outside the box with 2 minutes left. That felt harsh.
Our players were physically slighter, it’s clear though that the likes of Deacon, Ifans, Rees-Siso and Cook are right up for a challenge. The referee, fussy again for this level and for all the wrong reasons, managed to book Ifans, Deacon and Cook for innocuous challenges, with 3 Wednesday players joining them.
It took a little while for our players to properly get into today’s game, Rees-Siso was the pick for me – an energetic and skilful performance alongside Thomas Woodward and supporting our lone attacker.
The visitors’ coaching staff included ex-Huddersfield defender Andy Holdsworth and one-time Doncaster and Wales U21 midfielder Daral Pugh.
Weatherwise, we had our best spell when it was absolutely bucketing down. There’s possibly a moral there!
Have a browse of images from the match in this Swansea City Under 18 v Sheffield Wednesday Under 18 match gallery.
Feature Image Credit: Majestic Media