Worthy’s group continue work on high fight zone during Yorkshire derby
- Young Terriers’ improvement and reactive qualities on display
- Town Under-17s work on high fight zone against Bradford City
- Coach Jon Worthington pleased with ‘many’ positives he can take from the game
Town’s Under-17s worked on their high fight zone and reacted positively to two setbacks to win 4-2 against Yorkshire rivals Bradford City on Saturday.
After a scrappy opening 30 minutes it was the away side that took the lead, although the Young Terriers battled back and scored two excellent goals to take the lead into the half.
Utilising the high fight zone being covered in training, Patrick Jones won the ball in the opposition half and equalised, before a quick breakaway was rounded off with a close-range finish from Brahima Diarra.
Bradford equalised after the restart, another setback for Worthy’s side, but again they pulled through and scored twice more through Mustapha Olagunju and Ben Midgley, whose penalty was a direct product of the high fight zone.
The Under-17s Coach was pleased overall with the performance from his group and believes their latest test will be a good one to look back on for the positive aspects, and as a marker for how far they have come over the season.
“I’m really pleased. We’ve been working a lot on the high fight zone and I thought the press was really good; we won the ball high up the pitch, we were aggressive and that was all really important in terms of our learning objective. There will be some good footage from today to reinforce that,” he said.
“It’s always good to react to conceding, first at 1-0 down, then at 2-2 there were positive reactions from us.
“That’s something we’ve improved on as a group as the season’s gone on, having better resilience. Those qualities are really important as well as all the tactical and technical aspects of the game.
“Our training was around the high fight zone, so it was nice to play against a team that tried to play out. We don’t always come up against that week in week out and it allowed us to actually press high and set traps, and we did both of those well today.
“It helps as we’ll be moving onto the out of possession principles really, looking at the mid fight zone over the next two weeks and we’ll see if we can implement that in certain games for the learning and development.”
This will be viewed as a positive step in the Young Terriers’ development, and their next comes in the form of a trip to Crewe Alexandra in the Clarets Cup knockout stages.
Worthy will be preparing his side to play to the strengths they have shown in recent matches and progress to the next round.
Town’s Under-17 team vs Bradford City (4-3-3)
Giosue Bellagambi; Luke Daley, Mustapha Olagunju, Loick Ayina, Josh Austerfield; Myles Bright, Ernaldo Krasniqi (Robson Shipley, 75’), Ben Midgley (c); Sam Sharrock-Peplow (Gulutte Zunda, 75’), Brahima Diarra, Patrick Jones
Unused subs
Michael Roxburgh, Josh Okpolokpo, Darnel Baxter-Alleyne
Scorers
Patrick Jones 31’, Brahima Diarra 45’, Mustapha Olagunju 74’, Ben Midgley 81’
Final score
Huddersfield Town Under-17s 4-2 Bradford City
