The juxtaposition of Coventry City’s U18’s was highlighted on Saturday with the 4-0 defeat to Leicester City.
The Academy’s main role, which has become more important in recent times with the lack of finance that the club has, is to provide players for the first team, something, which has been highly successful of late with players from the Academy such as Cyrus Christie and Conor Thomas now firmly ensconced in the first team.
However, this season, the young Sky Blues are in with a very good chance of winning some silverware. They are top of the FA Premier Academy League Group B and were facing a key game against local rivals Leicester City, who have won the league three times in recent years.
City boss Andy Thorn included U18’s captain Jordan Willis in his squad for the home game against Barnsley and credit must go to Jordan for his hard work in breaking into the first team and to the all the Academy staff for helping to develop another young talent that the club can be proud of.
However, the City supporters who saw Saturday’s U18’s defeat were not best pleased when it later emerged that Willis was not in the first team starting eleven or on the bench, leaving Greg Rioch, who was already without two promising centre backs in Joe Henderson and Ricky Fletcher, who were both injured, to move over Aaron Phillips to play alongside Alex Donald.
Both Phillips, the son of former Sky Blue Dave and Alex Donald did well against Tom Hopper, a player City had expressed an interest in and a player seen as one of the best forwards in the Academy League Group B section. Despite their best efforts, they could not stop the ball being given away by midfielders at key times and Trevor Peake’s side were able to use that to their advantage to win 4-0.
Whilst the City supporters weren’t too happy, City Academy boss Greg Rioch wasn’t grumbling and told the CT’s Andy Turner: “We have been disrupted with centre-backs in recent weeks because Jordan Willis – who has been our captain and rock at centre half – has been brilliant and stepped up to the first team squad and Joe Henderson is our other regular centre half who has been out for six weeks with an ankle injury.
“Our first year Ricky Fletcher has also been out with a back injury so we are without any natural centre backs. But I can’t be critical because Aaron Phillips from right back and Alex Donald from left back came in and did brilliantly, considering they are playing out of position.
“So we can’t grumble because Jordan was in the first team squad again on Saturday and we had a couple of graduates on the pitch in Cyrus Christie and Jordan Clarke.”