Sam Tillen was pleased with the performance of his young players despite defeat against league leaders Bolton Wanderers.
A number of City’s second year scholars have departed on work experience loans to get exposure to senior football, meaning it’s a younger group of players for the second half of the campaign.
He said: “We were ultimately punished for conceding the first goal of the game. After that, we seemed galvanised and then performed very well. We created a number of great chances but lacked a finish.
“I was very pleased with the boys for 70 minutes, there were great performances from Lewy Oliver, Gbolahan Okewoye and Will Cowin, we looked very threatening and could have got a result.”
Tillen has urged his players to show more belief going forward as they aim for a strong end to their Youth Alliance campaign.
He added: “We must aim to be more clinical and ultimately believe in ourselves more, focusing on what we can do and how we can achieve it with a younger team and not look at the opponents, as we learnt on Saturday that even with some players missing we can really mix it with the best in our division.”