Paul rues U21s collapse

Coach Paul Brush lamented the performance of our Under-21s in the last half an hour of Monday’s defeat to Bolton Wanderers.

We contrived to throw away a two-goal advantage to crash to a 5-2 defeat in the Barclays Under-21 Premier League, the visitors taking advantage of the dismissal of Dominic Ball and rattling five goals past us in the latter stages of the contest.

Afterwards, Paul was left to look back on what might have been.

“The game changed really around the hour mark,” he said. “We made a mistake, conceded a penalty and we had a sending off but it shouldn’t have been the capitulation that happened in the last 20 or 25 minutes.

“It seemed like every time they broke through in that last 25 minutes they scored. To be fair they had plenty of purpose and drive about them and they really went for us with the man advantage.”

Despite the result, Paul insisted there were still some positives to draw from the performance – especially after we dominated proceedings for much of the first period.

“The first hour was very satisfactory,” he added. “We got Harry Kane on the ball a lot and he had a number of shots.

“Our goals came from two good right sided crosses, their keeper made one or two good saves. But we’re disappointed how easily we’ve conceded and the game has fizzled out.”