Young Saints light up the Park on way to 3-0 win

Allied Counties Youth Football League East Division

St Albans City MWY 3 Uxbridge 0

THE new-look St Albans City Midweek Youth team continued their impressive start to the season with a comprehensive 3-0 win over Uxbridge at Clarence Park on Wednesday evening.

The Young Saints, playing at the Park for the first time, showed why they are causing so much excitement around the club with an excellent display of passing football that belittled the fact that, as a squad, they’ve only been together since the summer.

Playing an adventurous 4-3-3 formation, coaches Graham Golds and James Gray got their young team playing with real width and this caused the visitors all sorts of problems. If there was one criticism it would be that too often the Saints’ attacking players tried to do too much themselves but that is something that will iron itself out the longer the season goes on.

Despite their excellent football the Saints had only one goal to show for their efforts in the first half. They could even have been behind when Josh Davies misjudged a long ball but ‘keeper Will Conway was quickly off his line to thwart the forward.

The only goal of the first 45 minutes came 15 minutes in when skipper Elliot Bailey’s deep corner was met by centre-half Laurence Wroe who bundled the ball home from six yards.

Uxbridge hit back through Mohammed but his powerful effort was calmly diverted over the bar by Conway.

Another Bailey corner from down in front of the boardroom was cleared as far as Matt Taylor whose wonderful first time volley beat the Uxbridge ‘keeper and smashed off the angle of bar and post.

City upped the tempo as they went in search of goal number two and a sumptuous one-two between marauding right-back Joe Zazzera and Bailey deserved better than the corner it resulted in after Zazzera’s low cross had been bundled behind.

After failing to add to their opening goal in the first 45 it took the Saints just 11 second half minutes to double their tally with a goal built from the back. The ball was pumped up the line to Tremayne Charles who took a touch before crossing for Bailey to net from point-blank range.

With over an hour gone City made their first change introducing Marino Savva for Gio Lee-Baptiste and the substitute got involved immediately, exchanging passes with Taylor on the left before feeding Charles who unfortunately blasted wide of the target.

The City forward didn’t make the same mistake twice though getting his name on the scoresheet after more good work from Savva. The substitute clearly had the better of his marker and delivered a cross for Charles who took a touch before guiding the ball into the net from inside the six yard box.

City still had to work hard to preserve their clean sheet and they required a perfectly executed slide tackle from goalscorer Wroe after an Uxbridge midfielder had broke unchallenged into the Saints’ penalty area.

The Saints continued to carve out opportunities but were unable to add to their tally as Cieren Yapp and Savva both shot wide of the target.

The result keeps City top of the embryonic East Division table ahead of next Wednesday’s tricky FA Youth Cup tie away at Thurrock (7.45pm).

City: Will Conway; Joe Zazzera, Laurence Wroe, Josh Davies, Myles Scott; Harry Carr, Matt Taylor (Cieren Yapp 80), James Shaw (Jamie Denyer 86); Elliot Bailey, Tremayne Charles, Gio Lee-Baptiste (Marino Savva 65).