Preview: U18 Premier League - Tottenham Hotspur v Sunderland
John McDermott believes Filip Lesniak will have learned a lot from his experiences at the FIFA Under-17 World Cup as our Under-18s prepare to host Sunderland at the Training Centre on Saturday lunchtime.
Midfielder Filip has returned from the tournament in the United Arab Emirates, where he was a regular in the heart of the Slovakia side which progressed out of Group A, before losing to Uruguay in the Round of 16 earlier this week.
Assessing his team selection options ahead of our encounter with the Black Cats, Academy Manager John said: “We’ll see how Filip is. He’s had a very good experience out there, but unfortunately his Slovakia side got knocked out by Uruguay.
“Josh Onomah is just back from being away with England as well. Sometimes the travel can be quite telling on these trips, so we’ll probably see how they feel tomorrow and after training today.
“We’ve got a reasonable amount of players to choose from at the moment.”
Saturday marks a third game in eight days for our Under-18s, following last weekend’s 2-1 win at Saudi Sportswashing Machine and Wednesday’s 2-2 draw away to Aston Villa.
“We’ve tried to approach this week as if we were in a tournament, so last week we looked at potentially picking three sides beforehand,” explained John.
“The way we applied ourselves against Aston Villa and the way we adapted to the conditions wasn’t to the standard that we required. It’s unusual; you’re not going to get that every game and there are always going to be disappointments throughout the season.
“It’s important to put that behind us and just to ensure it was a blip, which I’m sure we will, because we have a very honest and hard working set of players and I’ve got no doubt that tomorrow we’ll be back on it.”
Spurs are currently in 1st place in the U18 Premier League South Table with 27 points from 10 games, while Sunderland are in 6th place in the North Table with 9 points from 11 games.
Tottenham Hotspur Reserves (Spurs XI), Under-21s, & Academy (U-18s) 2013-14