City U18 return to action in the EFL Youth Alliance when they welcome Walsall to the Elite Performance Centre (12noon KO).
Hear from head coach Sam Tillen and get the lowdown on Saturday’s opponents.
Sam Tillen’s thoughts:
“We played a friendly at Barnsley on Saturday and rotated some minutes round so some of the lads that have played quite extensively got less game time and the ones that needed a bit of touch up on minutes played.
“This week we’ve been working on Walsall, we had a tough day on Tuesday and then moved into game prep on Thursday. We were also involved with the first team, which was great as a number took part in training.
“Walsall have had some good results but also ones that haven’t gone their way. We’ve had a look at them and we know where their threats are - it’s down to use to implement our game plan and hopefully that will us a positive result and performance.”
A look at the opposition:
Walsall are 11th in the EFL Youth Alliance after a mixed bag of results in the opening nine rounds of the season.
The young Sadlers recorded their first win since September last time out against Huddersfield and bounced back from two back-to-back cup defeats including an FA Youth Cup exit in the first round stage.
City last faced Walsall in the second round of the Youth Cup at the LNER Stadium. Goals from Gbolahan Okewoye and Zane Okoro helped City on the way to securing a 5-0 win on home turf.
Match information:
Sam Tillen’s side will look to extend their league unbeaten run to nine games with Walsall the next side to visit the EPC.
The game is behind closed doors, but supporters can keep up to date with the game with updates available from our Academy X (formerly Twitter) account.