Interim Academy Manager Pete Wild and Head of Coach Development Chris Millington were pleased with the result in last night’s FA Youth Cup First Round tie as Oldham Athletic beat Altrincham 1-6.
A Max Norman hat-trick and further goals from Harry Norris, Jack Williams and Ryan Pickford secured the win on a relatively comfortable night for the young Latics side.
However, Wild believes that there is still a lot more to come from the team despite the scoreline.
“I saw a very nervy performance, I thought it took us a while to get going, we scored some decent goals but we're pretty disappointed with not executing what we wanted to.” He said.
“It's the biggest challenge for young players (playing in front of people) it's not how they're going to perform, it's how they deal with things that goes around it with the fans.
“You can never control that and it's something we've hopefully got out of our system and we move forward in this competition.”
Latics will take on Sunderland U18s in the next round of the FA Youth Cup, but Wild isn’t looking too far ahead as he says the game with Grimsby Town on Saturday is number one priority.
“We've done well we've scored a lot of goals, but we've got to prepare for our league game on Saturday and then we'll prepare for Sunderland.” He commented.
“We’ll need to give a better account of ourselves to be the best we can be and if we get ourselves right we're a match for anybody.”
Several first team players and staff turned up to watch the youth team last night and Wild was pleased to see the support.
However, he accepts that in the long term this academy team will be judged on how many of the young players will make the transition into the first team.
“It's always really pleasing when anybody takes the time out, fans, players, staff and the parents of the lads, it's really pleasing to see that, and we thank them for taking the time out to support the lads.
“It shows the togetherness of the club, but ultimately it's about getting lads into the first team and we'll be judged on that as an academy and hopefully some of these lads have given a good account of themselves tonight.”
Millington echoed Wild’s thoughts on the performance believing the team can play a lot better, but he did have praise for a few individual performances on the night.
“Jack Williams has done what Jack does tonight, he's a threat whenever he's on the ball, he's the type of player that gets you out of your seat, so we're not surprised that he played well.” He said.
“I think Harry Norris did well at centre halve and Charley Leech grew into the game and became more effective as the game went on, so they're have been a number of good performances that we can take forward.”
Millington also says that the focus is firmly on Saturday’s game with Grimsby and the lads will be prepared as the academy look to continue this impressive run of form.
“We're thoroughly prepared for Grimsby, we do a light session in training, so the lads can recover.
“We're on the back now of five unbeaten with four victories, so we've got a solid base to build on and we want to continue that, and the lads want to continue that and we're very keen to get a good result on Saturday.”