Preston North End 3 Town 1
Saturday 8th March 2008
PUMA Youth Alliance

Town: GK Jasbir Singh, RM Jake Ellis, LM Aaron Gibson, CB Leon Miles (Harry Hooman), CB Wayne Farmer, RM Steve Davey, LM Kalum Evitts (Thomas Dicks), CM Anthony McDowell, CM Tom Moss (Will Richards), F Jan Coulston, F Andre Gray

Goals: A.Gibson

Town's youth side were unlucky to go down 3-1 at Preston but were guilty of not taking their chances.

The visitors had a number of good chances but couldn't turn those chances into goals.

After the game head of youth Nigel Vaughan was pleased with the performance but not the result: "It was another defeat but at times a score line doesn't show the true reflection of the game.

"I'm not saying we deserved to win but at the end of the day you have to take your chances and we didn't take ours, if we had then we would have beaten Preston.

"It was encouraging that Andre Gray had 4 decent chances, Tom Moss had a couple, Jan Coulston had a couple and we did ever so well in creating those chances.

"Are these games about winning or about developing players because at 1-1 I decided to bring on Harry Hooman. He's been out for a 6 or 7 weeks and we needed him to get some of the game under his belt and within 5-minutes of him coming on we've gone from being 1-1 to being 3-1 down. It didn't reflect on Harry but I did take the micky out of him about it.

"We had a number of youngsters on the pitch with Wayne Farmer, Thomas Dicks and Will Richards and that shows the progression we are making.

"I've told the lads that sooner or later we are going to put a couple of early chances away and then go onto win a game by 4 or 5 goals.

"The simple thing is these games are about the lad's development because if it was about results I don't think I'd be here.

"We've gone from 21 scholars at the start of the season to going down to 12, but we've got 2 lads injured, so at times we are training with 10 lads.

"This Thursday we've got trial matches with players coming in from all over the country to see if they can get scholarships for next season.

"I've had a lot of feedback from John McMahon, Stuart Delaney and Joe Hinnigan about Tom Moss and Jasbir Singh who are regularly training with the first team which is promising news."