First half Ben Midgley strike sees Town through to the Clarets Cup Semi-Finals
- Young Terriers 1-0 beat Crewe Alexandra in the Quarter-Finals
- Ben Midgley on target and Town keep a well-deserved clean sheet
- Coach Jon Worthington pleased with ‘dominant’ performance
Huddersfield Town’s Under-17s are through to the Semi-Finals of the Clarets Cup after defeating Crewe Alexandra 1-0, thanks to a great strike from Ben Midgley.
The captain scored with just under half an hour on the clock, using the high fight zone to win the ball back, drive at the defence and unleash an effort into the top right corner.
And from the run of play, Town’s youngsters were unfortunate not to have won by more come the final whistle.
The Young Terriers did, however, put in an excellent defensive shift at the other end of the pitch, keeping Alexandra penned in for large periods of the game.
When called upon Michael Roxburgh made some good saves, and in front of him his teammates were well drilled to keep Crewe at bay.
This result means Town are through to the Semi-Finals of the competition, with their opponents yet to be decided, and Worthy was pleased with the performance today that helped them achieve that target.
“It was excellent, and it should have been a lot more! But I’m still more than pleased with the performance,” he said.
“We scored a great goal in terms of what we’ve asked Ben (Midgley) to do since he’s been in the building, and that is be a box-to-box midfielder, drive with and without the ball and he showed a great example of doing that before the shot, so I’m pleased for him today.
“We dominated the game, and part of that is being solid at the back. We were solid today, limited them to minimal chances and on another day we could have gone on to score more.
“The clean sheet is great too. Mikey was good, he kept engaged in the game, had good concentration and that’s what it’s got to be like when the balls mostly up the other end - when he was asked to do things he did well; that’s the job!”
Now that a place in the next round is secured, focus switches back to development as the Under-17s travel to Burton next in the Youth Alliance League, aiming to show off the off the ball work they’ve been doing in training.
Worthy said: “We’ll continue the out of possession themes; we’re doing a lot of 11 v 11 scenario-based training around formations and different ways to press and along with today it’s all good learning and we’ll take it into the next game with the lads”
Town’s Under-17 team vs Crewe Alexandra (4-3-3)
Michael Roxburgh; Luke Daley, Josh Okpolokpo, Loick Ayina, Ben Watt; Ben Midgley (c), Ernaldo Krasniqi, Myles Bright; Robson Shipley, Brahima Diarra, Gulutte Zunda
Unused subs
Tom Bamford, Darnel Baxter-Alleyne
Scorer
Ben Midgley 28’
Final score
Crewe Alexandra 0-1 Huddersfield Town Under-17s
