Barradell Commends City’s Youngsters After ‘Dominant Display’
- Leicester City’s Under-18s beat Southampton 2-1 on Saturday afternoon
- Kirsten Otchere and Jake Evans scored the Foxes’ goals
- Jay Robinson opened the scoring for the visitors at LCFC Training Ground
- City’s youngsters face West Bromwich Albion on Saturday morning (11am GMT kick-off)
Following a 2-1 defeat to Arsenal in the capital earlier this month, the Foxes got back to league action last weekend, defeating Southampton 2-1 at LCFC Training Ground.
The Saints took the lead through Jay Robinson just after the half-an-hour mark, but second half goals from Kirsten Otchere and Jake Evans turned things around in Seagrave, as Leicester tasted success for the first time since an early September win over Sunderland.
“I thought it was a dominant display against Southampton,” Barradell told LCFC.com. “We were in control for large parts of the game, and we had a lot of attempts on goal and possession in their half, but we just couldn’t find that finishing touch.
“But we got there in the end. I thought the second half display was excellent; we pinned Southampton in their own half and showed some great creativity and positive individual performances. The boys got what they deserved which was pleasing because it’s not always been like that this season.”
The coach labelled the game a dominant performance from the Foxes, with the half-time team talk about trusting the process and the players' ability to turn things around and come away with what they deserved.
“It was calm at half-time,” Barradell continued. “We had some good discussions about what we needed to show more of in the second half. Their goal came from a lapse in concentration, and sometimes that can happen in youth football.
“When you have so much possession, sometimes that’s the most important time to have concentration from the defence and we didn’t do that and it cost us, but the second half was about being calmer on the ball and being braver to execute the game plan.
“It was about trusting what we were doing and just executing it better than we did in the first half. We wanted to be more clinical in both boxes; more ruthless in ours and calmer and more clinical, showing more quality in the opponents’ box and the boys did that. They are getting in the right areas to score, and I can see further down the line that we’re going to be scoring more goals.”
Last weekend’s win saw City climb to ninth in the standings with nine points from their opening seven games, and head into their next fixture, an away trip to West Bromwich Albion, just a point behind their opponents. An ability to see out games is something that they are working on each day and Barradell believes it will improve as the season progresses.
The coach added: “We could easily be sat here talking about us being higher up the league, but we are where we are because we haven’t been able to finish games off. But that happens with a lack of concentration so that’s something we’re working on.
“It’s really pleasing at the moment and there hasn’t been a fixture where we haven’t been extremely competitive in and the two losses have come through late goals. We’ve been leading in most and we are where we are, but there's lots of positives to build on.
“We’ve seen lots of Under-16s come in; I was really pleased with Jake Evans at the weekend, he came on and scored, so there were plenty of good individual performances which was promising to see.
“We’re looking forward to the game, we know it’ll be a physical contest. West Brom are a team that like to get into you and play on the front foot, so we’ll be ready for that. We won’t take the fixture lightly and it’s important we back up what we did against Southampton.”