Cardiff City’s U23 coach Andy Legg spoke to cardiffcityfc.co.uk following their first game of the Professional Development League Two season against Burnley U23 at Turf Moor.
“It was a great test for the lads to play against such an experienced team,” began Andy. “It just shows that we’re not quite there yet and it’s a big learning curve for the players but a great experience. As long as the players learn from their mistakes, understand the standards they’ve got to reach and take it onboard – we look forward to that.
“It just goes to show what’s required at this level. Playing against someone like Matěj Vydra who was the top scorer in the Championship last year and just been brought to this club for the Premier League - that’s the standard the boys have to reach.
“It’s great for our defenders to play against but it was a big hit losing four and I don’t think we did enough. Some of the goals were a bit sloppy but we’ll work on things, have a look at the video and work on our mistakes.
“The main thing is that the players learn from the mistakes they made, train a little bit harder and put more effort in. This is the level they’ve got to get to and we’ve got to seek those rewards for playing at this level. We knew it’d be tough when we saw their team tonight but we had a lot of young players playing and it was a good experience for them.”
The former City left-back concluded by giving an injury update: “Ciaron Brown took a knock to the thigh. I think it’s just a dead leg so he should be okay and Cameron Coxe had a little bit of a tight hamstring so we took him off as a precaution.”
18-year-old Jack Bodenham was tasked with defending against the 2017/18 Championship top scorer, Matěj Vydra. The Wales U19 international revealed what he learned from the experience and how he hopes to implement it in future matches.
“Burnley had a lot of First Team players involved,” said Jack. “Playing against Premier League players was a good experience not only for myself but a lot of the other boys as well. I think we can take a lot of learning from that, move onto the next game and hopefully improve.
“The competitive season has been a long time coming. Obviously, pre-season was quite tough and we’ve had a lot of games so it was nice to be rewarded with 90 minutes tonight. Turf Moor was a great stadium to play in and we’ll hopefully kick-on now during the season.”
Bodenham concluded: “It was a bit surreal really playing against Vydra. He was the top goal-scorer in the Championship and has scored goals for seasons so it was a good experience for me playing against a player like that. Hopefully I can take what I learned from playing against him and utilise it against other opponents to improve myself.”
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