Barradell: Keeping Our Concentration
- The Leicester City Under-18s face Tottenham Hotspur this weekend
- Saturday's game at LCFC Training Ground kicks-off at 11:30am GMT
- Coach Adam Barradell shared his pre-match views
In unlikely fashion, City's youngsters face Tottenham for the second time in a row, in a second competition, having lost 3-1 to their London counterparts two weeks ago in the U18 Premier League.
Ahead of the rematch, this time in the U18 Premier League Cup, the coach shared his thoughts on the overall progress of the team and what he hopes to see from the weekend.
"It's not often you play two teams back to back, so it's a great opportunity for us to build on the performance we had at Tottenham," Barradell said. "It was a competitive game against a good team but I thought the performance was good.
"The goal before half-time changed the momentum but just before that we had a really opportunity to go 2-0 up, but hit the post, so it's a game we're looking forward too and we know them well.
"We know their style of play so I'm expecting another competitive game. We're looking forward to facing them in the cup and maybe give some youngsters a chance and get a look at them in that environment."
The coach believes that the cup competition is a perfect opportunity to offer minutes to different youngsters to see how they fare at this level, and learn from their time in a new environment.
Barradell added: "The cup is different from the league in terms of how we approach it but with the FA Youth Cup coming up as well, it's a nice time to build on and of course look to win, but also focus on the learning outcomes."
Failing to see victory in any competition since October, Barradell announced that it hasn't been down to a lack of effort or positive performances, but instead individual errors and occasional lapses in concentration.
"In terms of results, we need more points than what we've got at the moment," he continued. "We started the campaign by getting some good results, but they've dropped off recently due to a number of factors.
"In terms of development, we're seeing boys go into the Under-21s, which is positive, but as a coaching team, we know we need to be harder to score against. We're giving up too many goals from individual errors.
"Structurally, the boys look good at times, but we've got to focus and concentrate individually to stop giving away the goals we are at the moment and if the lads can progress on that, we'll start to see results change in our favour."