U18 Preview: Saints vs Birmingham
Southampton’s Under-18s will be looking to continue their positive start to the Under 18 Premier League season as they host Birmingham City at Staplewood Campus.
Saints vs Birmingham City
Under-18 Premier League (South)
Staplewood Campus
Saturday 21st August, 11:30am BST
Saints had a positive start to the season, with the youngsters claiming a 2-0 victory over Norwich City at the Lotus Training Centre.
Goals from Dom Ballard and Riley Wright were the difference on the road at Norwich and Saints will be hoping to impress on home turf this Saturday.
Birmingham suffered a different fate on the opening day of the 2021/22 season, falling to a 3-2 home defeat to Brighton.
Despite George Hall netting after just 3 minutes, it wasn’t to be for the Midlands outfit as a hat-trick from Zak Emmerson saw the visitors claim a last-minute win.
Saints faced Birmingham just three weeks ago in a pre-season friendly, where Saints emerged 3-0 victors and will be hoping to replicate that victory on Saturday.
MANAGER’S NOTES
Saints’ Under 18’s individual coach, Mikey Harris, reflected on a positive start to the season, “A really good result, a really good performance from the boys.
“We’ve been working really hard to put into practice the principles we were working on in pre-season and we were rewarded for that.
“We were particularly pleased with the clean-sheet, I think that’s testament to the way the lads have worked in pre-season.
“We’ve got an interesting situation because we actually played Birmingham three weeks ago when we were at St George’s Park in pre-season, so I guess we’ve both had a look at one another.
“Really looking forward to getting our home campaign under way and hopefully we can build on last week’s performance.
“Obviously it’s really nice to win games but for us we’re looking at focusing on the principles we’re trying to embed through the playing style and trying to improve on that every week and with those performances good results will come.”
