Latest Apprentices

Saturday and everyone was in as the first team were training in preparation for the FA Cup tie against Portsmouth. I was with Dave again and we did some handling work before moving into some exercises that Szamo had learned in Poland…

Match: Stoke City vs West Bromwich Albion

We were hoping to get our own back over a team we thought we could have beat the last time round but didn’t. We had also played our worst game to date at their place…

Match: Preston North End U18 v Tranmere Rovers U18

Thursday was College as usual and Friday was match day once again as Tranmere Rovers visited Springfields. It was our first game at Springfields since before Christmas when we beat Burnley 2-1. ..

Match: Preston North End U18 v Bury U18

Wednesday was match day, the quarter final for the Lancashire FA Youth Cup and league leaders Bury were the opponents. The game was delayed by 45 minutes due to a nasty accident on the M61. ..

Tuesday morning and once again we were on grass due to the good weather. We also learned that we wouldn’t be playing the Bury game at Deepdale, but at Irongate, Bamber Bridge FC’s ground, which everyone wasn’t too happy with. ..

A number of things have happened since I last wrote. The Christmas break and other things interrupted my routine but since my last post the first team have managed to get themselves in and out of the relegation zone. ..

Match: Liverpool vs Stoke City

We started very well and dominated the opening periods of the game. We managed to carve open a couple of good chances but couldn’t convert either of them until we were awarded a free kick to the right of the penalty area out wide. ..

Again we were up at the Dome this morning to make our final preparations in time for the game tomorrow night. We went through all of our set plays and Ady gave us more information in detail about their players and how he wanted us to approach the game. ..

Up the Dome again due to the very wet weather, we started to prepare for the game on Thursday by doing some work on our shape and Ady going through what tactics they would play on the night. ..

After the postponed game on Saturday all of our attention was now set on Thursday’s Youth Cup game away to Southend United. So today we set about training with a good tempo, but were all shocked that Ady had set out running drills for both the morning and the afternoon. ..

Usually I would be writing that we’d done ‘just the usual… shape and set plays’ but after a pitch inspection today and thanks to the constant rain over the past few days tomorrow’s scheduled home game against Crewe Alexandra has been postponed due to a waterlogged pitch! ..

A rather hard day today in comparison to the last two, not only did we have a double session but we also had some running drills set out in the morning. Not many complaints about the running with this being the first running drill since the start back of training. ..