The Sky Blues Under-18s fell to a 3-2 defeat against Colchester United on Saturday morning, despite another strong attacking performance.
Charlie Manners and Riley Siddall were on the scoresheet for the young Sky Blues, but their goals could not help the U18s escape defeat away against the U's.
City’s youngster recorded 30 shots on goal over the course of the 90 minutes and Professional Development Phase Coach, Chay Thompson, shared his delight at the promise of his side’s attacking performance.
“We started the game really fast and pressed really aggressively,” he said.
“We had good numbers ahead of the ball to make some good attacking opportunities and we went into half-time goalless, despite having three, four, five clear-cut chances.
“It was pleasing we created 30 goalscoring opportunities- 30 shots on goal- so, overall we’re disappointed to get beat but happy with the chances we created.
“A lot of our shots were blocked but we were getting in some great areas, however, we were a little bit wasteful and weren’t ruthless enough but the positives is getting into those good areas.
“I’m a big believer that if we keep getting in those positions we will score goals, so we’ve done a lot in training around combinations and in the final third at the right moments and hopefully we’ll get our reward next week.”
Thompson highlighted "penalty box battles" as the U18s downfall against Colchester and spoke of the importance of winning those battles moving forward.
“We didn’t sustain our attacks well enough and when the ball came out, we weren’t organised and got countered and that’s something the players can work on and get better at,” he continued.
“We were disappointed with the goals we conceded because I thought they could’ve been avoided, but we looked back at them this morning in good detail and that’s the learning the boys have got to take away from the game.
“When we’re defending, we’ve got to be brave and make blocks. And when we’re attacking, we’ve got to have that clinical edge and bite in our teeth to go and put the ball in the back of the net.
“The boys are feeling positive, though, because, like I said, it was a really good performance.
"In between the boxes we were dominant and we moved the ball well, we had runners off the ball, it was just that last bit that we were missing.”