Pre-season kicks off in Poland for the under-23s
The first team played their first pre-season game last night, beating Fulham 1-0 in Portugal, and today it is the turn of the under-23s and the under-18s to get their first taste of competitive action ahead of the 2019/20 season.
Both of them kick off at 12 noon but it will be the under-23s who go first with their clocks one hour ahead of ours in Poland, and after a week training at the Hotel Remes complex close to Poznań, we face the reserve team of local club Pogoń Szczecin at our training base.
Steve Stone’s squad out there includes some trialists, one of whom we believe could be Joel Mumbongo, and some members of the under-18 squad, namely Edon Pruti, Cricky Conn-Clarke, Ben Woods, Matty Rain and Mitchell George. All of those players could come under consideration for today’s game along with the regular under-23 squad although it is reported that Vinnie Steels is a potential doubt after missing a couple of training sessions while Mace Goodridge is making his way back from a cruciate ligament injury.
The game could see a first Burnley outing for Joel Senior (pictured), who we have signed from Curzon Ashton. He’s the only confirmed new signing as yet but Stone wants some more. “All managers and all coached want new players all the time,” he said. “At the end of last season we let four or five players go who had been here a while, like Clarkey (James Clarke), Mark Howarth and Tinashe (Chakwana), who had all done really well for the club but I felt needed to go and play men’s football.
“We needed to create a bit of space for the younger ones coming through or some fresh ones to bring from other clubs. The only disappointing thing about it is I haven’t been able to bring anyone else in yet (other than Senior).
“I haven’t let that be a frustration and I’ve worked with what we’ve got because that’s part of the job as well, but the intention is to bring some in and top up the level.”
On today’s game, he said: “It will be two different teams. It’s a way of giving every player 45 minutes. It’s a progression of where they’ve been on the training ground and it’s the end of a hard two weeks. They’ll play a half and then start again on Monday. We then play Wednesday and Saturdays after that for the next three or four weeks.
“They’ll all be getting minutes and they’ll all be getting time and that’s fair.”
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