Big defeat for under-23s against Birmingham
Burnley’s under-23 team suffered a 5-0 defeat against Birmingham City this afternoon at Gawthorpe, a second five goal defeat of the season.
Three goals in the first half saw Birmingham ensure they’d be taking the points back and two more in the second completed the scoring with Burnley hardly threatening the Birmingham goal throughout.
Richard Beale, in charge of the Birmingham side, said: “We spoke to the lads a couple of weeks ago and said if we keep playing as we have been, someone is going to get a shooing. Well, we were ruthless and I don’t really remember them having a shot.
“We’ve now beaten a Category One side (Middlesbrough in the Premier League Cup) and a Premier League side in four days and this game ended a schedule of five in 13 days. So it’s been really pleasing, the lads have finished this spell off playing good football, scoring goals and looking fit and strong.”
Michael Duff had a very young side out again which included three teenage trialists and against a much older and more experienced Birmingham line up. “We’ll learn more from that than they will,” he said.
“Once you get to 3-0 or so you switch off and stop learning. We’ll pick the bones out and tell them what they need to do better. It won’t be pleasant. It should hurt a few and they should be determined not to let it happen again. That’s not to say it won’t but as long as you can affect one person from that game then it’s been worth it.”
He added: “It was a weird game, they scored five goals from outside the box which is an anomaly in itself. Their youngest player was 20, that’s the oldest group they can have, we were young and had three trialists playing. It was tough, but as I’ve said before we’re not in a results industry, we’re in a development industry.
“It’s disappointing to lose the game but there were pluses within it, I thought Dwight was excellent, Ntumba (pictured) was better than he has been recently.
“It looked like an academy game, our chances came from really good football, but you can’t always play really good football, someone has got to put their foot in sometimes and sometimes you have to whack it down the pitch and fight for a second ball, which they did better than us.”
But he also said: “They need to learn there are two sides to a game of football. Part of their development is learning to be a little bit nastier and a bit more ruthless with each other, to show a little bit more desire without the ball.
“We’ll learn a lot from that because there were some things that weren’t good enough and we need to learn from that. You’ve got to find a way to win, which is what the first team do better than anybody.”
The teams were;
Burnley: Conor Mitchell, Arlen Birch, Trialist, Oliver Younger, Trialist, Tunde Bayode, Christian N’Guessan (Rahis Nabi 75), Dwight McNeil, Brad Jackson (Ali Koiki ht), Trialist (Tommy Wood 75), Ntumba Massanka. Subs not used: Connor King, James Clarke.
Birmingham: Jacob Weaver, Josh Dacres-Cogley, Josh Martin, Luke Maxwell, Steve Seddon, Charlie Lakin, Remeao Hutton, Dom Bernard, Kyle McFarlane (Berely Lubala 60), Jack Storer (Olly McCoy 73), Wes McDonald. Sub not used: Lewis Landers.
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