Town U18s Manager Alan McLoughlin is confident of his side’s chances against Bristol Rovers tomorrow morning (11am Kick-Off).
The young Reds will make the short trip down the M4 looking to build on their encouraging performance during their 0-0 draw with AFC Bournemouth two weekends ago.
“We played Bristol Rovers just over a month ago and managed to win the game, but they were a good team, they tried to pass the ball around through the thirds and out from the back and mix their game up,” he told swindontownfc.co.uk.
“That’s what you would expect and I was quite impressed with them. It is going to be a tough game and both teams had players sent-off when we last played each other.
“They had their centre-forward sent-off and unfortunately we had Christian Frimpong sent-off, which was a silly one and hopefully he’s learnt from that.
“The game is at Yate Town, it is a 11am Kick-Off and we’re looking forward to the fixture.
“The focus of this week has been when we do get the ball into wide areas what is our movement in and around the box, when to cross it, when to come back in and retain the ball but, more importantly, feeding the forwards who need chances.
“We’ve worked very well over the summer period and into the Autumn period in terms of good shape when we don’t have the ball and now it is the right time of the season to start expressing ourselves and working a little bit more on how we go about our game in scoring goals.
“I want us to get more balls into the forwards quicker and that has been the focus this week. Can we get crosses in from the wide areas at the right time to get defenders defend and I want my forwards to get across that near post, whether they take a defender with them, whether they get the reward themselves or you make a run unselfishly to give someone else a chance.
“That has been the main focus this week and that’s what we’ve directed most of the training towards.
“Also, by doing that you have defenders defending so they’ve had a good week in terms of anticipating crosses and anticipating when it is cut back towards the edge of the box.
“So although it has been heavily focused on what we do going forwards, the defenders have had a good lesson this week in coping with that, so it has been a really good week.
“Hopefully we can finish it off with a positive result against Bristol Rovers.”
Apart from the suspended Christian Frimpong, Town’s U18s only have one fresh injury concern to contend with ahead of tomorrow’s game.
“We’re nearly back to full strength but unfortunately Jordan Simpson has had an ear infection this week and he’s only trained once, so that will discount him out for the weekend,” McLoughlin continued.
“Scotty Twine was involved in the first-team on Tuesday but he didn’t get on so he will feature this weekend.
“Other than that we’re pretty good to go.”
