AFC Bournemouth
AFC Bournemouth under-18s captain Lewis Brown has his eyes on helping his team to regain early-season form.
Alan Connell’s side began the 2022/23 campaign with a quartet of victories across league and cup.
However, the following three matches have all seen defeats, with the losses coming across three competitions.
With the visit of Cheltenham Town to Canford Park Arena in the EFL Youth Alliance on Saturday’s horizon (11am kick-off), Brown is looking to impose his leadership.
“Like Al says, hopefully everyone goes on to have a career,” he explained to afcb.co.uk.
“There will be harder spells than this if we do, like teams like Leicester are enduring now in the Premier League.
“They’ve got a bright future and good players, but they’re struggling near the bottom.
“We’re not struggling near the bottom but we just need to find that spark that we had at the beginning of the season.”
Brown added: “My role now is to help these players get back to where we were a few weeks ago and get the team spirit back.”
The league fixture follows a second-round exit to MK Dons in the EFL Youth Alliance Cup in a 3-2 defeat at their training ground.
Having played the full 90 minutes in Buckinghamshire, Brown is clear on where the side needs to improve.
He said: “The MK Dons defeat was a hard pill to swallow because it took us going 3-0 down to start performing.
“We looked flat and lethargic, and we said at the end that we maybe lacked confidence.
“We’ve scored plenty of goals over the seven or eight games that we’ve played this season but we’ve got to take the defeat on the chin; we’ve got to improve.”
While the skipper was in no doubt of the challenge the Robins pose on Saturday, he sensed an opportunity for the under-18s.
“They’re a good team. We played them at the beginning of last season, we drew 0-0 and then went to their place and drew 3-3,” Brown said.
“We know that it will be a hard game so we’ve got to perform, we’ve got to put our recent defeats behind us.
“It’s a massive opportunity for us to get another win on the board.
“I know that if we get a win the team moral will change because we’re a good bunch of lads; we all want to work hard and we all want to learn.”
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