Roach After Consistency - Mixed fortunes for youth

Cherries Under 18 Manager Joe Roach reflects on two contrasting games as his team get back to league action.

First up was a 4-0 win against Cheltenham Town with Jamie Davidson bagging all four in the second half. That was followed up by a 3-2 defeat by Plymouth with Eliott Cooper and James Queree on the scoresheet.

Here's what Joe had to say:

We started a little sloppy against Cheltenham and the pitch has a slope that suited the home side. We took some time to adjust and within the first fifteen minutes they could have scored a few goals. We had a lot of changes so took time to bed in and we changed the formation twice during the game to stabilise things.

We made a change at half time, had the slope to our advantage. James Davidson played exceptionally well up front on his own and scored all four goals, two of which were good team goals. I was really pleased with the performance overall especially as we were short of bodies.

We then had a different team for the Plymouth game with five changes through availability. Against a well organised and strong side they gave us problems, but we gave ourselves our own problems. We lost possession of the ball easily and Plymouth were deserved winners.

We'd like to get some consistency, can't remember the last time we played the same team twice so sometimes that can be difficult. But we expect results regardless as we're a results driven organisation.

The lessons learned from the two games will be that people need to do jobs asked of them as individuals. If that's the case we come together as a group which didn't happen this Saturday but did last.