3 min read
29th Apr 2021
With a limited squad of players to pick from for their final two U18 Premier League North fixtures of the season, Steve Davis is hoping his young Wolves side can use the games as a building block for the next campaign.
A lengthy injury list has impacted the second half of Wolves under-18s’ season, with Davis admitting he’s having to protect his players ahead of Saturday lunchtime’s home clash with Everton – in which Wolves are aiming to get back to winning ways after successive defeats – to avoid further lay-offs as the end of the footballing year approaches.
On what to expect from Everton
“They’re in the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup, so we know their potential. Getting that far is no fluke and they’ve beaten some great teams to get there, notably Chelsea, who they beat 2-1.
“Everton are another club who do get talent through their system and give a lot of opportunities within their squad and first-team. They’re always fit, always competitive and always organised, and then they have those individuals who can turn games.
“We expect another tough game, although we won there 3-2 earlier this season with a young team, who performed very well on the day, so we expect another tough day.
“It’s our final home game of the season at Telford, and we’ll want to be as competitive as we can be, we’ll look at how both teams have performed over the last couple of games and see if there is anything that was can learn from that we didn’t know about from the previous time we played them.”
On a growing injury list
“The team virtually picks itself at the moment because of the amount of injuries that we’ve got, so we don’t have a lot of options or choices to make, so those lads are working hard and trying to improve week in week out.
“We’ve got to work with what we’ve got squad-wise, we’ll try to be protective and wrap the players up in cotton wool because we can’t afford to lose anyone else.
“We had Chem [Campbell] drop down Saturday because he needed some game time, which was a huge help to us, and if there’s opportunities for any of the other 23s who need game time to drop down, that would be good again, but if not, we’ll go with the 13 players we have available.
“It’s another game for us to learn, develop and try to prepare ourselves for next season.”