Under-18s coach Greg Crane said there were positives to take from his side’s Premier League Cup defeat to Brighton & Hove Albion but his players had to start learning lessons quickly.
The team put in a good first half display but then conceded an avoidable goal just before half time and then picked up a needless red card in the second half to go down to 10 men and eventually lose the match 3-0.
Crane felt it was individual errors like this that are costing the team but the players must push and progress to come out of the current slump they are in.
“I thought first half it was a competitive game,” he said. “Both teams had some half chances, we did some good moves but we couldn’t get that little bit of lady luck that we needed or that bit of quality to take the lead. Then just before half-time we allowed them to score and that put a dampener on the first half performance.
“So that was really disappointing in terms of the timing. The second half started okay, but then a couple of little things went wrong and a young lad, who has stepped up from the under-16s during the last couple of games and played well, just found out what the next level is about. He just misjudged the flight of the ball and got caught on the wrong side of his player and then brought him down and got sent-off.
“We just need to learn that the higher you go, the more these individual moments are going to cost you and then it is hard to get back in the game from there, really. There were some good signs but there is still these lessons that the players need to learn and need to learn from quick.”
Speaking about the positives from the match, Crane praised the workrate of Harry Brooke and leadership quality of Lewis Shipley, especially when the side were down to 10 men.
“All credit to Harry Brooke, I thought he tried to lead by example,” said Crane. “He tried to run and tried to push on and I loved the intensity that he showed.
“Lewis Shipley was the same. He tried to lead, and he tried to help and tried to demand. It was not easy down to 10 men, but I felt that we could play a bit more and we did we were okay, but we have got to progress, especially over the halfway line, a bit better than what we are doing at the moment. Hopefully, that will come next week away at Fulham. We have just got to keep doing the right things, keep progressing, keep pushing forward and then hopefully they will come up out this little slump.”