The U18 side recorded their first victory of the season with a 3-2 win over Walsall at Chapel Road on Saturday and Youth Team manager Danny Cadamarteri gave his thoughts on the result.
Latics surged into a 3-0 lead with goals from Reece Gaskell, Ryan Pickford and Jack Williams putting the young lads in front. Cadamarteri was delighted with the attacking output of his forwards as well as his side’s overall performance.
“We asked for a reaction after last week’s 0-0 draw. We wanted to get another clean sheet which we didn’t quite manage, but we created lots of chances and scored three goals so overall I’m very pleased.”
Athletic created numerous chances throughout the match and despite being pleased with his side netting three goals, the former Premier League striker felt the team could’ve been even more ruthless in front of goal.
“We've worked a lot on our finishing and getting the forwards into good areas, so I'm pleased its paid off today.
“I've said to the lads that we can be even more clinical. We've created lots of half-chances and clear-cut chances and not taken them so I think we could've got a few more goals today.”
Cadamarteri also commented on his side’s intention of pressing high-up the pitch and forcing the opposition into mistakes, which paid dividends for the opening goal.
“We've said to the boys that we want to press high as we've got a lot of energy in the last third and we've got a lot of pace in our attacking players.”
He added: “We feel that we can use that pace not only as an attacking attribute, but a defensive attribute.”
“We've told the players that we want to go after the opposition really quickly after that first pass and try and create chances off the back of that, which we did for the first goal.”
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