U23s - Wolves vs Manchester United

Should be an interesting game this. The 2 best teams in the division so far. Wolves were top of the table until their defeat to Southampton by 3-2 (their first defeat so far). They are also the team who with the most goals, even if 7 of them came in one game against Sunderland. The most surprising thing is that Wolves haven't really had one player scoring a lot of goals, they have shared the goals remarkably well between the players and over 10 players have scored for them in the League.

Quick info on some of the players who might play today.

Andreas Søndergaard - GK - signed from Danish side Odense in january. Danish youth international
Oskar Buur - DEF - another Danish player signed from Brabrand IF last summer. Scored on his League debut against Hull in april 2018
Alexander Molberg - CD - no surprise, another Dane. Tall defender signed in the summer from Hobro. Danish youth international
Max Killman - LB - 21 years old signed from Maidenhead in 2016.
Daniel Csoka - CD - 18 year old Hungarian defender signed in january 2017.
Cameron John - CD - Captain of the side. Signed from Southend 2015. 19 years old. Just signed a new contract With Wolves
Ryan Giles - LB/MID - Academy player of the year. One of the biggest talents and trains regularly with the first side now.
Elliott Watt - MID - Scottish youth international. 18 year old who made his first-team debut in the League cup in august
Sadou Diallo - MID - signed from Man City's Development Squad in the summer. Born in Guinea, grew up in Rotherham
Paulo "Paulinho" Alves - MID - portuguese signed from Liverpool on a free transfer in the summer.
Pedro "Pote" Goncalves - MID - another portuguese player signed from Valencia a year ago. Highly rated
Carlos Heredia - WINGER - Spanish born Dominican full international. Signed from MK Dons in 2016. Good at set-pieces.
Benny Ashley-Seal - ST - previously on the books of Spurs and Arsenal. Signed from Norwich in 2017.
Niall Ennis - ST - 19 year old talent who has suffered 3 bad injuries already in his career. Represented England at U17, 18 and 19 level
 
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Good team, hopefully Greenwood can pick up a goal or two on his debut. Where's Burkart at the moment, is he injured?
 
They're pressing us quite well, both teams organised and defending well.
 
Vintage Sbragia ball. Concede a goal from a cross and no semblance of a cohesive attacking unit.

Wolves look good though, very tough and organized. They look way more physical and got an extremely solid back line. Someone like Dominic Iorfa is a great challenge for our lads. Unfortunately, we aren't looking up to the challenge really. Gomes gets fouled every time he is on the ball and no one else is really doing much. Another game where Bohui looks pretty much anonymous imo, get DJ in.
 
Ah ffs nipped to make a brew and missed the goal, who scored?
 
SteveW said:
Greenwood. With the first bit of service he got in the whole game.
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Go figure. We’ve sorely lacked any spark this game, Sbragia football at its finest.
 
Sbragia is an example of what's wrong with the club. The type of football we want to play at first team level should be reflected at every age group.

Could you imagine him being left near City's young players? I can't
 
These Wolves players are streets ahead of us physically, very good test for the lads.
 
SteveW said:
Sbragia is an example of what's wrong with the club. The type of football we want to play at first team level should be reflected at every age group.

Could you imagine him being left near City's young players? I can't
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Tbf he's got the style of the first team down pretty well. Actually has it mastered even better to look even shittier. :lol: It's actually quite impressive how you can make a group of lads this talented look so bad so often.

Took us like a year to appoint him too. A year of looking and Sbragia is what we came up with. Crazy.
 
limerickcitykid said:
Tbf he's got the style of the first team down pretty well. Actually has it mastered even better to look even shittier. :lol: It's actually quite impressive how you can make a group of lads this talented look so bad so often.

Took us like a year to appoint him too. A year of looking and Sbragia is what we came up with. Crazy.
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It really is something that half these lads can go from tearing apart the UEFA Youth League with such style to looking so clueless within days.
 
limerickcitykid said:
Tbf he's got the style of the first team down pretty well. Actually has it mastered even better to look even shittier. :lol: It's actually quite impressive how you can make a group of lads this talented look so bad so often.

Took us like a year to appoint him too. A year of looking and Sbragia is what we came up with. Crazy.
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Its been obvious for years that the club doesn't give a feck about the reserves.

Which is pretty ridiculous when you think about it. What the hell is going on in this club?
 
Bohui's killed so many attacks tonight, get DJ on.
 
What a goal, thought that was surely a foul on Tanner though.
 
Referee's lost control of this, just allows teams like Wolves to become thuggish.
 
Greenwood already looks too good. Some talent.
 
Disappointing result, we were the better team for the most part but some players really stick out like a sore thumb. Wasn't impressed by Wolves, they have some decent players in that team but they were a very strong physical side, didn't think they were very good technically though, their captain's excellent goal aside.

We created very little tonight, bit too slow in our build up and when we did try and play with a bit of pace it felt rushed. Bohui had a really poor game tonight, Hamilton looked way off the pace too. That Iorfa was their best player, probably helps that he's 23 and already played 100 first team games though I suppose.
 
Only saw the second half but thought we looked the better team even if we did struggle to create at times, the only real problems we faced were when we allowed their pace to shine, think they got away with a foul before the second goal too even if the finish was incredible.

Greenwood did well for the goal and had a lovely first time lay off at one point too, he started to drop deeper as the half went on as he wasn't getting much service but I'd have preferred to see him hold his position a bit more, especially when we were chasing a goal.
 
SteveW said:
Its been obvious for years that the club doesn't give a feck about the reserves.

Which is pretty ridiculous when you think about it. What the hell is going on in this club?
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Butt's stance of the u18s being more important than the u23s is ludicrous and it's led to a bunch of idiots lapping it up and trying to claim the u18s league is better than the u23s which is just stupid.

Anything good Butt does, for me is only counteracted by the fact he also thinks Sbragia is a suitable coach for our u23s. Its a joke tbh. Beyond the shit football Sbragia literally serves no purpose at all and there has clearly been very little growth from his sides. Joyce played shit football at times too and from what I've heard has gone onto play shit football since leaving too but he served a purpose which made him a very good u23s manager. He instilled the grit and determination to become a senior player and he drilled in the defensive tactics and set up a very good backline to prepare players for the intensity of the senior game. Even if it wasn't pretty all the time, it was serving a purpose. He also instilled a winning mentality and a competitive spirit. Someone which isn't present in u18s football and needs to start to be learnt in the u23s. Sbragia doesn't offer any of this, he offers nothing.

We've always taken way too long to promote players to the u23s and now when they get there all they get is shit coaching anyway.
 
limerickcitykid said:
Butt's stance of the u18s being more important than the u23s is ludicrous and it's led to a bunch of idiots lapping it up and trying to claim the u18s league is better than the u23s which is just stupid.

Anything good Butt does, for me is only counteracted by the fact he also thinks Sbragia is a suitable coach for our u23s. Its a joke tbh. Beyond the shit football Sbragia literally serves no purpose at all and there has clearly been very little growth from his sides. Joyce played shit football at times too and from what I've heard has gone onto play shit football since leaving too but he served a purpose which made him a very good u23s manager. He instilled the grit and determination to become a senior player and he drilled in the defensive tactics and set up a very good backline to prepare players for the intensity of the senior game. Even if it wasn't pretty all the time, it was serving a purpose. He also instilled a winning mentality and a competitive spirit. Someone which isn't present in u18s football and needs to start to be learnt in the u23s. Sbragia doesn't offer any of this, he offers nothing.

We've always taken way too long to promote players to the u23s and now when they get there all they get is shit coaching anyway.
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I think the lack of quality in the u23 leagues is part of the problem. Clubs feel good players around 18-21 would be better served going on loan. For a few seasons we've really seemed to just field u23 teams out of obligation. For the last few seasons we've regularly fielded 11s without any players who had a chance of playing first team football here.

While I partly agree that the u23s is a poor league and loans are more beneficial I still don't think this attitude is excusable at a club like ours. We have the resources to treat every team we field seriously. Someone like Sbragia should not be here. It's most irritating this season when we actually have a number of very talented players in the U23s. They gain nothing from working with him. This is an important time in their development. If we aren't loaning them out we need to fcking coach them properly ourselves.
 
SteveW said:
I think the lack of quality in the u23 leagues is part of the problem. Clubs feel good players around 18-21 would be better served going on loan. For a few seasons we've really seemed to just field u23 teams out of obligation. For the last few seasons we've regularly fielded 11s without any players who had a chance of playing first team football here.

While I partly agree that the u23s is a poor league and loans are more beneficial I still don't think this attitude is excusable at a club like ours. We have the resources to treat every team we field seriously. Someone like Sbragia should not be here. It's most irritating this season when we actually have a number of very talented players in the U23s. They gain nothing from working with him. This is an important time in their development. If we aren't loaning them out we need to fcking coach them properly ourselves.
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Exactly, this is one of the reasons why United is searching for feeders club in Spain so we can loan majority of our player like Mason Greenwood, Gomes and Chong, etc. there to get minutes, they prioritize U18 more over U23 that has no business in developing players due to the lack of quality in the U23 leagues, if they are enough talented to play for EPL in the future then they deserved a loan instead of rotting in U23 for nothing, they would gain nothing from playing in U23.
 
We lost to a very organized and physical team whose players also on average were more than 1 year older than us. Wolves were by far the best team we have met this season, but we still made it too easy for them.

One of the problems with our football is that every attack centers around Gomes. And as much as I like the guy - he is still very inconsistent. His set-pieces yesterday were horrible, and he tends to dribble the ball a bit too much. Greenwood showed quality in everything he did - but what he did, he didn't do enough. When he scored the goal, he had barely touched the ball for 50 minutes. He needs to do more than he did yesterday. So when I read about people saying he should start against Everton based on scoring a goal in a U23-game...jeez. It was a neatly taken goal, but the keeper should have saved it and he never would have been allowed that much space against a P.L-side. He is a huge talent - but let's be realistic people.

As for the Wolves-winner - yes we can complain about it being a freekick. We can also complain about the fact that Tanner losing the ball, and noone catching up with the Wolves-player afterwards. Or we can simply acknowledge that it was a BRILLIANT goal.
 
@lysglimt regarding your point with Gomes, I have noticed most of our attacks seem to be forced through him, that's got to be an instruction from Sbragia. He's important for the U19s but we're nowhere near as reliant on him for creativity, I think it's just poor management.
 
It's because Gomes is easily the best playmaker in the team. His talent was evident yesterday and with a proper ref Wolves would have had at least one red card. It's hard to be consistent when opposition are allowed to foul you every time you touch the ball and don't even call half of them.

But yes, Sbragia also sucks balls.
 
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