YOUTH: Pleasing to see the lads listened

When asked if it had been an enjoyable game to watch, he said: “That depends on the point of view you’re looking at it from. It must have been fantastic to watch for neutrals because it had a lot of goals, loads of incidents and some decent football was played.

“I was happy with the way the team approached the game from a coaches’ point of view. We had a very young side and we asked a few things of them before they went out onto the pitch. We wanted to see if they could stay organised and we told them they were going to have to be disciplined.

“Blackpool had a strong side out and we knew they would take the game to us. The lads responded very well and their work rate was phenomenal. Mind you, even though I’m saying I was happy with the performance we did concede four goals. That came down to individual mistakes but, as I say, tactically we played very well.”

“The lads are bound to learn a lot from a game like that,” he agreed. “It was hard work for them but we do like closing down from the front.

“What we saw was that we were willing to run, but we possibly took the option to run at the wrong times on occasions. That meant they started to get tired so we had to ask them to sit back and have a breather period.

“That then meant Blackpool had to come and try to break us down and that worked, to a certain extent. It was pleasing to see the lads listened and then went out to execute what we had asked them to do.”

On conceding the late equaliser, he said: “You could see in the changing room afterwards they were gutted. Alan Moore and I were delighted with the performance and we went in there singing their praises at full time. The look on their faces told us they weren’t listening because they were devastated. 

“We had to tell them that they had just scored four goals and got a point against a very strong side. We asked them if they felt they’d achieved the things we asked them to do. To a man they said yes. That for us is a huge plus point.

“However, they’re young and they want to win games, and you understand where their disappointment comes from. But the goals are a particular plus point for us because we’ve worked on that in training. We’ve looked at how we get behind the opposition back four and that has started to come together.”

“They’ve got another tough game on Friday with a fairly long trip down to Wrexham,” he told us. “We don’t use distance as an excuse because it’s part of the game. We’ll go with a game plan and hopefully we’ll see a little bit of consistency in our performance levels start to creep in.

“We’re introducing a number of U16 and even an U15 player to the set-up at the moment and they learn a massive amount from being involved at this level. It’s a huge learning curve. We had a player, and I won’t name names, who hit 90% with his heart rate on the subs bench. That was when we told him he was going on. 

“That shows how much it means to them and, in a situation like that, you have to help the young lad to calm down so that he’s in a place where he can actually perform. It’s difficult for them because the pace of the game is a lot quicker, but they have to learn to cope. These younger boys have responded well and that’s pleasing.

“Doing this allows us to look ahead to next year even though we know we do have the second years to deal with. They’re getting a bit anxious now because they know decision time isn’t too far away. We’re talking to them all the time to try to bring them through it, but it is a difficult time for them. 

“With all of them, whatever their age, it’s about concentrating, learning and giving us good performances. We remind them that they’re allowed to make mistakes because we want to see how they react after it’s happened. They’re taking that on board, so all in all we’re quite happy.”

United - Williams, Hurley, Pearson, Watson, Groves, Holt, Salkeld, Rudd, Brown (Egan 87), Breen (Taylor 70), Bradbury (McCarrow 89). Sub - Bacon.

Goals - Salkeld, Bradbury, Brown (2)