Greenfield Youth FC U14 Pa 2 vs 0 Moordown & Southbourne You

The Panthers ended up with a hard-fought 2-0 victory against a determined and well organised Moordown and Southbourne side. The boys had three instructions in today's team-talk: to play with intensity and win the physical battle, to ensure that our positioning was correct both in and out of possession and to make good decisions on the ball quickly.

Unfortunately, Moordown had other ideas and showed that they could more than match us in terms of physicality and desire throughout the first half. We struggled to find the spaces both to receive the ball or to play the ball into and found it difficult to break them down. Defensively, we coped well with their threat and all of our centre-backs deserve praise for keeping their

shape and snuffing out any threats. Midfield was very congested and we will need to keep working on giving ourselves more space and ensuring that the opposition has more ground to cover. Our strikers ended up being a bit isolated due to the ball getting stuck in a physical battle in the middle but to their credit Tom and Noah both persisted and pressed and made runs.

The half-time team talk was a repetition of those three initial targets but I asked the boys to execute them better! We scored a good goal following a good ball down the left hand wing from Jamie G to Jamie M who used his pace to get in behind a toiling Moordown defence.

Jamie was unselfish and passed across the six yard box for Noah who scored the tap-in. The second goal was similar with Jamie G who passed for Noah who was then assisted by the Moordown keeper to tuck in the second to make the win more comfortable.

Man of the match went to Luke for an assured performance at right centre back. He nullified their threat, passed the ball accurately and showed good skill and composure in bringing the ball out of defence.

Next week we will face tougher opposition in the last 16 of the Hampshire Cup and so hopefully our injured players will all be back and fit and ready to compete.

Thank you to Paul for reffing, Mike and Matt for running the line and Jo for keeping the peace on the touchline as respect marshall.

Happy new year to everyone and up the Panthers!