The Sky Blues youngsters lost 5-2 away to Aston Villa U18s in a friendly on their return to matches from the festive break.
Speaking after the game Chay Thompson spoke about the importance on arranging the friendly ahead of the resumption of the league season.
“We are really pleased with the game because there was a lot of players who got minutes, who needed them and that’s what the priority of the game was. It’s our first game for five weeks so that was the main priority of the game.
“We know the boys would be rusty, first half we weren’t good enough with the football and gave it away cheaply to often and we were disappointed with the four goals we conceded in the first half and not getting out to the ball and blocking shots in and around the penalty box, which we have been good at recently.”
As the result suggested there were both positives and negatives to take from the game which the staff will look at it in training ahead of the resumption of the league campaign.
“With the ball we could have been a lot better, but we understand the boys were a little rusty.
“In the second half we played some outstanding bits of football at times, some nice passages of play lead to numerous good chances created and we scored two really good goals with Craig Hewitt and Aarons Evans-Harriott scoring, which we ae pleased about. “
“We’ll focus on the key moments in training this week, looking to continue to create chances in and around the penalty area. We just need to get back to basis and work hard.
“We’ve got a tough game Saturday which will be a completely different test to the one we faced today, so we’re looking forward to that game.”
Despite the result, the squad are happy to be back, and Thompson speaks on the mentality of the group heading into the second half of the season: “Every week we strive to be better as coaches and as players. We look at how fundamentally we can improve themselves as individuals, which will in turn out the team improve.
“As long as we keep wanting to improve on a day-to-day basis there should be no reason why we can’t progress on last season. We’ve got to keep them focussed and keep working hard and hopefully we can hit the ground running on Saturday.
“We are delighted to get this game out the way, it was a good game for us to play and get out any rustiness within the squad. We needed the game before our tough one against Barnsley next week.”