U18 Match Preview | Cardiff City vs. Swansea City
Cardiff City’s U18 side continue their Premier Development League campaign on Saturday, as they welcome South Wales rivals Swansea City to the Leckwith Sports Campus – KO at 11am.
City will arrive at their home ground on Saturday morning in good form following several good results in recent weeks. The most recent came in the Severnside Derby against Bristol City. Will Spiers, Trey George, and Japhet Matondo got themselves on the scoresheet, as City claimed a priceless 3-2 win. U18s Manager Tom Hutton is happy with how his side performed last time out, and believes they are a team that are improving every week:
“We were happy with the majority of it," Tom began. "We had a lot of control in the first half and scored some good goals. We challenged the boys to maintain that control in the second half, but we did struggle with that a little bit. Fair play to Bristol, they changed shape and caused us some problems. But we were really pleased with the desire the boys showed to score late and seal the three points.
“We’re slowly getting towards our top level every week. The squad is becoming more settled, and it’s always difficult to get that consistency when you have boys who sometimes play in the 18s and then move up to the 21s for a little bit. For now, we’re certainly moving in the right direction in terms of our style of play that we want to try and implement, and we want to try and get that consistency for the whole 90 minutes.”
The string of good results has seen City jump to sixth place in the PDL South, picking up ten points from their first seven games.
This weekend sees Hutton and his men welcome Swansea City to Leckwith. The Swans sit one place above the Bluebirds in the table, but a victory against them would mean that City would leapfrog them in the standings. Ollie Jefferies’ team are coming into this one off the back of a 4-1 win over QPR last weekend. These two met earlier in the season in the PDL Cup, with Swansea running out 4-2 winners, but Hutton believes his side have learned a lot since then.
“The landscape of the group is very different to when we played them last time," he explained. "You always know it’s going to be a challenging fixture when you play Swansea; they’re a really good team who are very well-drilled. The South Wales derby is always a competitive game, and that’s something we’re really looking forward to. We always want to improve, and we’re slowly doing that, and Saturday gives us a really good opportunity to show that.”
