Saturday 30^th August

Football League Youth Alliance

South West Division

Cheltenham Town 0

United 2

United's under 18s made it two wins from their opening two games on Saturday with a win at Cheltenham. Adam Bowerman and Chris Fower scored the goals as United's very young side beat a more experienced Cheltenham side.

Coach Les Taylor writes:

"This was an excellent performance. We have said all along that with our second year scholars involved with the first team we are going to bring the youngsters through and with four schoolboys in the side against a Cheltenham team that had four players with first team experience we played very well.

We were without Alex Fisher, Declan Benjamin and Sam Deering through injury plus Richard Groves was with the first team at Ebbsfleet. It's great that they are all getting that experience and it's how things should be.

We took the lead after half an hour when Adam Bowerman, who isn't the biggest, got in a great position at the far post and powered in a header to make it 1-0. Adam has great energy and deserved a goal but we weren't expecting it to come from a far post header.

The game was fairly even for a while after that. Cheltenham are fairly direct and powerful but we stood up to that and tried to pass the ball at every opportunity, and should have got a second goal long before we did in the 75^th minute. We won a free kick on the edge of the box by the bye-line and James Dobson showed some good thinking by driving it hard and low across the six yard box. That meant it was a very hard to defend and Chris Fower got the final touch to steer the ball home. Chris has scored in both games so far and is level top scorer with Niall Hodgkins with two apiece. They are starting to form an understanding and that is very good for the team.

We brought on three more schoolboys in the closing stages and to see such a young side play so well and enjoying their football was a real pleasure. Here are still a lot of things we can improve on and there is a lot of hard work ahead, but we have started the season brightly and there are plenty of encouraging signs."

United