James McPike was pleased with the overall performance by the team in their comfortable victory away from home against Nottingham Forest.
Wolves under-18s completed a dominant victory after dispatching their hosts Nottingham Forest by four goals to one on Saturday afternoon. Goals from Emilio Ballard-Matthews, Conor McLeod, Mateus Mane and Makenzie Bradbury saw the Old Gold make it four wins from their opening five games in the U18 Premier League, and assistant coach McPike enjoyed the performance the youngsters put together.
On what pleased him most
“I think the number of chances we created, recognising where the space was, what was working and what was hurting them and I think the boys really executed the game plan well and created a lot of chances.”
On going 2-0 up so quickly
“It's always a strange one when you don't plan to go 2-0 up immediately, so it's always a bit of a tricky one to navigate, to keep the momentum. I think the boys weathered that little period well, and overall kept the intensity at a high level.”
On wanting to be even more clinical
“They’ve put a big part of it together. I still think we can be more clinical in front of goal, even though we scored four today and that's just a credit to the quality of the players and the chances we're creating.
“We've just got to be a little bit more ruthless in the box because the lads are good enough to do that.”
On improvements to make
“In an ideal world we want a bit more of the ball, but we recognised very quickly what was causing them problems and that's the game, not being obsessed with having spells of possession for the sake of it.
“It's recognising what was hurting them, what was working and where our chances were coming from. I think that's why we were so successful.”
On winning the ball high up the pitch
“I think we'd like to think of ourselves as a really aggressive and high pressing team - I think that's part of our identity.
“Today we allowed a bit more of a first pass before we went, which caused them a lot of problems and probably increased our regains high up in their third of the pitch. It’s definitely something we want to be known for.”
On hosting Stoke next weekend
“We want to continue to improve in both boxes still and be more ruthless. Stoke are going to be really competitive, really well organised and it’ll be a challenging game, so the same intensity is required, the same bravery to get on the ball and just being more ruthless in the box with the chances we created.”
By Rivaan Athwal
