by shaka's shorts »
27 Jan 2014 17:33
I went to the u18 match v Fulham at Hogwood on saturday as a guest of one of our team's parents. Fulham are top of the u18 league and have a number of England youth internationals, including Patrick Roberts who is reportedly the best 18 year old in England. He got a huge signing on fee from Fulham (I cannot tell you how much it was but I did hear a figure which was startlingly high!). He is also already getting paid a fee by his boot sponsorship deal apparently. He was very impressive, playing behind the striker as a number 10. he is short, has great first touch and vision and can dribble too. He reminded me of Jack Wilshire. Why you might ask am I reviewing Fulham's star player? I wanted to put our boys performance into perspective.
Reading rested Fosu, Kelly, Kuhl and Stacey as we have our key u21 cup game this week and they will play in that. The striker from the Youth Cup game (Vaschuk?) was unavailable too, so the only one of the attacking 6 players from weds who played was Fridjohnssen. The back 5 were unchanged. The full team was:
Ward; Watson, Owusu, Dickie, Hyam; Fridjonsson, Shaughnessy, Ofori, Lawal; Husin (Collins, 80), Jeffrey.
I have been waiting for the team / report on the OS before posting this as I wasn't sure who Lawal and Husin were.
Ofori played right wing, Lawal left wing and Husin played behind Jeffrey.
The stand out players were Ward, Hyam, Dickie, Fridjonsson and Shaughnessy.
Ward kept us in it a few times with some excellent diving saves and diving bravely at the feet of on rushing Fulham strikers.
Hyam and Dickie were very solid, won lots of headers and looked composed on the ball (particularly Hyam)
Fridjonsson was my man of the match, great distributor, worked hard and very comfortable on the ball.
We scored first and went in 1-0 at half time after Germaine Ofori tapped in a rebound from 6 yards after a shot (from Husin I think) was parried by their keeper.
This goal was slightly against the run of play, we struggled to create many chances in the first half as our front 4 struggled to get into the game.
In the second half we had a lot more chances as the game opened up and Jeffrey started to look a real threat going forward as he held the ball up well. But Fulham also had more chances and Ward made some stunning saves. Their equaliser was a free header from 6 yards after their pacy winger beat Owusu and put in a great cross.
Fridjonsson then hit the bar and cruelly with almost the last kick of the game a speculative long range Fulham shot deflected wickedly off a Fulham player (who looked offside) and dribbled into the opposite corner with Ward wrong footed. Reading were very unlucky and put up a great performance.
When we have Kelly, Fosu, Stacey and Kuhl back this team will be pretty formidable (hopefully)
