Familiar foe for Oluwayemi ahead of Cambridge clash

Josh Oluwayemi is looking forward to coming up against two of his former team-mates when our Development Squad takes on Cambridge United in the Papa John’s Trophy tonight – but insists it’ll be strictly business between them until after the game.

Defender Jubril Okedina and attacker Shilow Tracey both spent time on loan at Cambridge last season before signing permanently for them over the summer, having previously been regulars in our Academy set-up.

Josh consequently knows both players well, but isn’t losing focus on our overall task at the Abbey Stadium – to win the game and make it two wins out of two in our group following the recent 4-3 thriller at Stevenage.

“It’s great to be playing against both of those players, but they’re opponents today,” said Josh, who earned his first call-up to the senior Nigeria squad earlier this year.

“It’s good to see your friends go on to play in the league and take the next step in their careers and it’ll be interesting to see some familiar faces, but at the end of the day we’re going there to win. After the game we can catch up but as of right now, the message and the requirement is to win.”

Does Josh feel our squad’s familiarity with Jubril and Shilow could help us on the pitch?

“We just have to be alert, because with them having played for us, it gives us a little insight into what they do, but they’re both top players so we’ll have to be at our best to keep them at bay,” he said.

“We’re very confident going into the game. The first game against Stevenage has given us a spring in our step for this one – everybody is ready and hoping to get a similar result. We’re scoring goals which is encouraging – it’s our task to turn them all into wins. We play an attacking style of football but we’re also putting an emphasis on keeping the ball out of our net and I’m sure that in the coming games we’ll start to see that a bit more.”

Kick-off is at 7pm – follow us on Twitter @SpursOfficial to keep up to date.