YOUTH: Good to get going again

Alan Moore on the Fleetwood and Shrewsbury games

Youth team manager Alan Moore spoke to us about the Fleetwood and Shrewsbury games.

"We've had a busy start to the season," he said. "The two games we've already played have been very different but it's been good to get going again. We played Saturday and Tuesday and we'll do the same next week.

"We've had two chalk and cheese performances. I don't think it mattered that Fleetwood had already played a game, a lot of our lads were nervous and they wanted to get the game out of the way.

"We got punished for individual errors which we hadn't been making in pre-season. We're trying to put it down to a one-off and I think Tuesday, against Shrewsbury, proved that.

"We gave the players a challenge of proving it was a one-off and they did that. We sent them away to watch the DVD of the Fleetwood game, and analyse themselves, because the whole season is about learning and developing. They've learned from Saturday into Tuesday already, so that's pleasing to see."

"It was important for the lads to get that reaction," he admitted. "They did the match analysis on Monday and they told us what they'd done well and the things they felt they needed to work on.

"It was all coming from the players and they realised when they were making mistakes. It's important they don't keep making the same mistakes and they showed that they've learned from them with how they approached the second game."

"Arron Bradbury is scoring a lot of goals," he told us. "He got two in the last game we played in Holland and he's scored in both league games we've played so far.

"We want him to get more involved but he does strike a lovely ball and it's something he shows us every day in training. He's technically very good with his right and left foot. The challenge for him is to get on the ball more during the 90 minutes."

"The trip to Holland has been massively important for the whole group," he said. "We've got a group of players who are all together and you can tell if one of them has an issue somebody else will help them out straight away. As a group of players they are very close and as far as team bonding goes the two weeks in Holland has really helped."

"We've got two good tests against Preston and Rochdale coming up," he said. "Preston will be strong lads and Rochdale finished second in the league last year, so they'll get it down and play football.

"They'll be two different games but I'm fairly confident that if we play like we did on Tuesday we won't have too many issues."

On the amount of home games scheduled for the start of the season, he explained: "The Rochdale game was due to be our first game of the season but both teams were in Holland so we had to reorganise that.

"A couple of other teams asked us to reverse the fixtures, because their facilities weren't ready, so we seem to have an awful lot of home games before Christmas.

"We've got a block of four home games coming up and we'll have another block of five after that. We'll be on the road a lot after Christmas but it's just another game of football and another learning tool for the players."