United’s under 18s kept up the pressure on the leaders with a 2-0 win over Yeovil on Saturday morning through goals from Albie Hopkins and Owen James.
Saturday 18th November
Football League Youth Alliance
Oxford United 2
(McCreadie, James)
Yeovil Town 0
Leon Blackmore Such told us:
“I thought it might be hard on the back of a great win in the FA Youth Cup but we sat down and talked about the need to motivate yourself even more because obviously the cup was a big game for us. We are doing well in the league and we wanted to put pressure on the teams at the top; Swindon, Exeter and Bournemouth. We have a run where we play all of them soon so we want to be in a decent position when we face those games.
“There was a good intensity to the way we started . Yeovil got after us and pressed us but we coped well with that and got into decent areas. It was a bit scrappy but we couldn’t quite get the breakthrough in the first half and we knew what we needed to do after the break.
“Sometimes all we mention is the goalscoring but defensively we were really good: Nathan Baker, Matt Berry-Hargreaves and Dan Carr played as a three and did really well. That’s three clean sheets recently and that’s a rarity in youth team football so all credit to the lads and to Niall Clayton in goal. Aaron McCreadie shielded them well in midfield and picked up a lot of second ball and that gave our wing backs room to get forward.
“The first goal came when Albie Hopkins had a shot blocked and Aaron struck it back across the keeper from the edge of the box.
"It got harder when we went down to ten men after making all three subs then getting an injury to Nathan Baker. But in the 93rd minute, despite being a man down, we countered with speed through Albie again and he squared it to Owen James to make it 2-0. That was unselfish play from Albie but reward for Owen too because he kept pressing and working hard even when we only had ten men,
“Credit to all the boys. We worked extremely hard to get that clean sheet and all three points.”
United
Clayton, Carr, Berry-Hargreaves, Baker, Lofthouse (Crooks 60), Hopkins, McCreadie, Cowan (Chilcott 70), Heap, Manning (Stevens 60), James