Oldham Athletic’s youth team played out a 1-1 draw with Scunthorpe United in the EFL Youth Alliance Cup on Saturday.
The Latics youngsters fell behind on the stroke of half-time before Samuel Amankwaa equalised in the second half.
Interim Academy Manager Pete Wild felt his side deserved the win, but he was pleased with the overall performance and attitude of his players on Saturday.
“We were really pleased with the lad’s attitudes, not just the lads that started, but the ones on the bench as well and I feel we’re getting a real good squad togetherness around now.” He said.
“Obviously wins help, but we think the lads are buying into our ideas and with a busy month coming up it bodes really well for us.
“I thought we were the better side, although we started sloppy, we got a grip of the game and we were the far better side and, on another day, we could have had three or four goals.
“Credit to their keeper he had a great game and kept us at bay, they scored a goal right on half time which was disappointing as it was against the run of play, but fair play to the lads because maybe in the past few months we wouldn’t have come back from that.
“We came out second half and dominated, managed to get a goal from a set piece from Sam Amankwaa who’s in a good run of form at the minute and we thought we could go on and win the game, but we couldn’t get the ball over the line, so the result wasn’t a win that the performance merited.”
They were a few changes in the starting XI for the youth team, but Wild was pleased with the performance of those who came in and with the options the team has going forward.
“We switched a few lads around who haven’t had as much game time as others and the overriding feeling was the lads that came in did themselves more than justice.” He commented.
“They fitted into how we played very well and so the pleasing thing about the weekend was that we’ve got 19 lads who can come into the team in a number of positions.”
The academy side face Altrincham FC next up away in the FA Youth Cup First Round this Thursday, November 1 (7:45pm).
Details of the trip to the J.Davidson stadium can be found here.