A hard week of pre-season ended in the right way today with the first ‘match’ of pre-season.
United’s First Team and Academy sides have worked extremely hard over the last seven days and things stepped up a gear this morning with a hard-fought eleven-a-side game for an hour.
The game was competitive although no risks were taken: John Mousinho and Sam Long took part in the warm ups but are not quite ready for full contact training although not far off, and Marcus McGuane looked good on his return.
“It’s been a good week” Karl Robinson told us. “Having a game was more about breaking things up than anything else but it was still good to see players competing and communicating; there were plenty of things to take away from the game itself.
“But the main thing is we have come through the first week with no injuries, players coming back from previous injuries have done well, we have looked at a couple of trialists and the new lads have become part of the group already.
“Now we get away for a week, we keep working hard, and then have a series of friendlies that we are really looking forward to.”
The U’s now head for Bournemouth for a training camp ahead of the first friendly of the summer, at Oxford City next Friday evening.