Goals from Green and Sowerby sealed the victory
Town’s development squad triumphed against the Nike Academy at St George’s Park on Tuesday afternoon.Goals from Josh Green and Jack Sowerby earned the Cod Army an impressive win in Staffordshire which maintained their good start to the year.
Goalkeeper Mason Springthorpe was called into action late on as he made a fine penalty save, and manager Barry Nicholson was pleased with his side’s display.
He said: “It was another good performance from the boys. We started the game very well and managed to get a penalty after a couple of minutes.
“It’s always nice to get an early goal because it settles the lads down and lets them go and play from there. We pressed the ball well and won the ball back in really good areas.
“St George’s Park is a great place to play as they’ve got some fantastic surroundings and great pitches which are well looked after.”
Nicholson was delighted that his team managed to keep a clean sheet, and praised his shot stopper along with the back four.
“Mason made a great penalty save for us with about five minutes to go which obviously kept the clean sheet intact. I was pleased for him as it was a great penalty save.
“The back four will be pleased with themselves for not conceding, but overall it was a good team performance from us.
“Going forward we played some really good stuff and the shape of the team looked impressive.
“We’re playing the diamond formation and we’ve got players who can play in the positions really well.”
Despite the positives, Nicholson wants his players to better their discipline in the coming weeks and believes he will see an improvement.
“The only thing that let us down was our discipline. We got sucked into arguing with the referee and arguing with their players.
“I’m all for a bit of aggression but the lads have got to understand that a couple of them could easily have seen red cards in a proper game.
“I tried to explain that to the lads after the game that they have to keep calm on the pitch and not get sucked into anything else that’s going on around them.
“We played a young side and had two youth team lads with us in Conor Smith and Matty Williams, so we were really young and it made the result a little bit sweeter.”