Our men’s under-18s suffered just their second league defeat of 2023 on Saturday as they were beaten 2-0 by Southampton.
Will Merry opened the scoring for Saints after eight minutes before Charlie Tasker was sent off for Albion for a second bookable offence ten minutes after the restart.
With Arthur Brammer’s team pushing for a late equaliser, Southampton countered and scored with virtually the last kick of the game to put the result beyond doubt.
“It’s been a good last couple of weeks,” Brammer reflected. “We’ve had positive performances with some good results against West Ham and Tottenham.
“It was pleasing to see our ideas and identity come through against Southampton and despite the scoreline it was one of our best performances of the season. We gave a goal away, but we found our rhythm quickly and somehow didn’t equalise.
“Then we went down to ten men, but I am really proud of the team for the way they played and continued to assert their authority.
“A draw would have been a fair result, but when you’re pushing for something late on you leave yourself open to the counter-attack and they scored with pretty much the last kick of the game.
“We told the boys afterwards how proud we were. We’ve spoken to them since about cutting out sloppy errors; we need to concentrate for 90 minutes and, if we do that, we will get positive results.”
The men’s under-18s play their penultimate Premier League South match of the season this Saturday, when they head to Fulham, kick-off 11am.