Under-18s go down to a narrow defeat in Devon
Plymouth Argyle 1 Oxford United 0
Tuesday 8th November
Leon Blackmore-Such describes United’s away game at Plymouth:
This is always a tough fixture for the lads with a four-hour journey, but we got there in good spirits after the Cheltenham win and just wanted to keep that going. But in all honesty we simply weren’t at it from the very first minute. We were poor in and out of possession and Plymouth did well in moving the ball and picking up second balls and 50/50s.
We spent a lot of time defending but we got to half time 0-0 and we tried to rally them and say it wasn’t going to be a pretty game of football but we were going to have to fight for everything. We didn’t respond to that though and a cross to the back post and a finish made it 1-0 to the home side.
We did give it a good go in the last 15 minutes, but didn’t create any clear opportunities so the contrast from Saturday through to Tuesday was really clear. I think we stressed that it is consistency you need, from
game to game.
They are young lads and it is about development and learning and I think they learnt a lot from the two games in terms of moving from one good performance and needing to keep that level even if the next game is just two or three days later. We just dropped off by five or ten per cent and that affected us badly.
United: Clayton, Berry-Hargreaves (Mannings), McDonnell, Hawtin, Carr, Baker, Graham, Napa (Bryan), Hartley, Hopkins (Heap), Noel-Williams