Town's youth side win away to Tranmere
Youth Alliance
Tranmere 0 Shrewsbury Town 1
Saturday 25th August 2012
Town: Wearing, Carpenter, Richards, Smith, Astley, Musslewhite, Easthope, Gwilliams (Dickin 90), Stephenson, Jones (Ryan 60), Anderson (Fletcher 66).
Subs not used: Wells
The game was untidy first 20 minutes which gave us room for concern after last week’s performance but to give the boys credit they began to settle and grew with confidence as the game developed.
With an impressive start to his season Connor Wearing was first called into action with a fine save high to his left tipping over the bar and with some defensive blocks from Smith and Astley we generally coped with what Tranmere threw at us.
Some smart play from Anderson, Easthope and Gwilliams created our first chance forcing a good block from the Tranmere defence which then gave us a couple of successive corners which we weren’t able to capitalise. We also had a number of free kicks in dangerous areas but our delivery let us down a little.
Second half came and we needed to defend higher, force the opposition back or into longer passes for us to begin to control the game. We started to do this and it was from some positive play from Jones where he delivered a dangerous cross which was deflected into Kaiman Anderson’s path, he then guided the ball into the net for the only goal of the game on 48 minutes.
By staying compact through midfield and defence we always looked a threat on the break with Gwilliams, Easthope, Ryan and Stephenson creating numerous attacks and although not resulting in attempts at goal we were playing in the right half of the pitch.
Apart from long range efforts and another fine save from Wearing we were hardly troubled second half which gave us a lot of pleasure and again confidence to go into the next game, determined to win and play positively.
Pete Wilding