Town were beaten 2-0 by Burnley
Graham Alexander believes he is learning more about his young players after Sean Dyche’s Clarets left the Fylde Coast with victory this evening.Town have recruited a number of youngsters during the off-season, with the likes of Amari’i Bell, Lyle Della-Verde and Vamara Sanogo all penning deals.
And the boss feels the pre-season programme will benefit his squad come the start of the League One campaign against Southend United.
He said: “We were up against a very good team tonight who have obviously just come down from the Premier League.
“We gave them a tough game but they gave us one as well. I was disappointed with the two goals again.
“Between the boxes though I thought we played well, but we just need to find that ruthless streak when we create these opportunities.
“We need to brush up on a few things defensively too, but there were lessons learnt today for the youngsters as they came up against a tough opponent.
“We didn’t want to have an easy pre-season programme because we knew we had to test a lot of players out.
“We needed to know who was up to speed and who could play with each other, and we weren’t going to be able to do that against easy opposition.
“We’ve played teams like this in games like this to make sure we know exactly where we stand on August 8th against Southend United.
“We’re learning more about the young players and the ones we’ve brought in because and how to get the best out of them.
“The lads are learning a lot during pre-season and we want to get this experience into them as quickly as possible.
“When we get to the real thing they’ll hopefully be best prepared as they’ve been physically pushed and have played top opposition over the past few weeks.”