Jerry Gill was elated with his side’s performance against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday, despite losing 1-0.
Gill believes that the young Wolves were the better side on the day and that his players can go into their next game full of confidence.
Aside from the result, the academy boss was impressed with how his side implemented, what they had worked on in training.
“We’d worked on our phase three, which is the pressing side of the game, all week - that was the focus and I thought that was probably the best bit of our game,” Gill began.
“The individuals understood their roles within the system, they were really aggressive within it as well and we made it difficult for them to play - the pleasing thing for a coach is that when you've worked on something and you see it coming to fruition on a Saturday.
“They didn't create too many clear-cut chances - we lost to a penalty in the end which was undeserved.
“We dominated the game in possession - I think we had 100 more passes than them in the game, we had really good progressive possession as well.
“Generally as a performance, I thought it was excellent.”
Until the West Brom clash, the Wolves academy hadn't played a competitive match since early December.
The Under-18’s manager was pleased with his player’s attitude and he believes that the performance will give his players confidence in the coming weeks.
He continued, “We showed that we are a team than can keep the ball and be confident in possession and have some really creative ideas as well,”
“I thought our pressing was fantastic - we were tough to break down and when we lost the ball, we won it back very quickly and that made them resort to a lot of long balls.
“We thoroughly deserved to get something out of the game - we didn't unfortunately, but it was a really encouraging performance from the team.
“There were some really good individual performances - Cameron John was outstanding at centre-back, I don't particularly like singling out individuals, but him and Dan McKenna showed that they’re up to a higher level of football.
“They led by example and put in two really strong performances and there were some other really good individual displays.”
