The young Blues built on their midweek FA Cu success with a 2-0 home victory over Bolton on Saturday, and we caught up with youth boss Eric Kinder to get his thoughts on the game.
“It was a good end to a good week ... eventually,” he said. “I think Wednesday caught up with them at the start of the game on Saturday.
“There was a bit of a delay to the kick off due to one of the assistant referee’s being a bit late, which disrupted things, but Bolton had to deal with that as well.
“We started the game so poorly. We were slow and it looked like we were in for a really hard morning. Bolton had two or three good chances in the first 15 minutes, but we survived them and finally woke up after that.
“It was a very good performance from that point onwards. It’s been the story of our season, we’ve been very inconsistent and we haven’t managed to put a full game performance together. We’re still not there yet, but I was very pleased with them after the first 20 minutes.”
Striker Sam Fishburn took the plaudits as he bagged a goal either side of the break to help to secure the win.
“Sam got his goals on Saturday and, if you look at the stats, he runs further than all of our players every single week,” Kinder told us. “His work rate is incredible, he never stops and he’s got an unbelievable engine.
“That will stand him in good stead as he gets older because a centre forward has to work hard. He certainly does that, we just need to help him improve his finishing. He scored two good goals on Saturday but he also had two really outstanding chances to get his hat-trick, which he didn’t take.
“If he’s going to take the next step he’s got to take the vast majority of the chances he gets. But nobody can complain with the effort he puts in.”
“It’s ended up being a really good week for us,” he continued. “We’ve gone through in the youth cup with a good first half performance, then a poor second half, then beaten Bolton at home after a slow start, but a good 70 minutes or so after that.
“We have to get that consistency right, but I always keep saying to the boys that I’ll never be satisfied. There’s always something that will bug me and I’ll want them to improve on, that’s the way I’ve always been.
“I’ll never be happy and I’ll always want more from them, but as a week overall it’s been a really good one for us.”
The next week brings a double-header against Bradford as the sides meet in the Alliance Cup and the FA Youth Cup.
“We play Bradford in the Alliance on Saturday before we play them on Thursday in the FA Youth Cup, so it’s difficult to know what to expect from the first game,” he admitted. “The Youth Alliance game is a dead rubber for us, because Morecambe have beaten us both, so we’re both out already.
“I imagine we’ll be playing cat and mouse with each other a little bit and putting different sides out. I don’t know what we’ll do yet.
“We’ve got a major problem with Ryan [Swailes] with a knee injury which doesn’t look good, but we’ll know later this week.
“The initial assessment from the physios doesn’t look good. Lewis Rooks is also out so we’re really thin on the ground, so we’ll have to be careful on Saturday.
“Bradford will do the same because the weekend meeting is a nothing game. If I had my way we’d call it off because it doesn’t make any difference, but we’ll play it and hopefully come out with no more injuries before Thursday.”
United - Robinson, Steele, Barnett, Day, Kilsby, Walton, Leslie, Watt (Taylor 46), Bell, Swailes (Ellis 51), Fishburn. Subs - Breeze, Simons, Garvey.
Goals - Fishburn (27, 61)
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