BW U18's 5-1 Arsenal

Just thought id point it out as Natasha was slating the Academy staff.Jimmy Phillips,David Lee and a few others i cant even be bothered to mention.First Game last year we won 4-0 at QPR and look what happenned.Its a marathon not a sprint.If we get beat off Derby and Forest then ill be the first to be part of the Coyle out brigade.But with KD and Knight playing we were always gonna be up against it.KD passenger Knight out of position for 2nd goal leaving Ream and Ricketts to try and stop the bundled ball home.Not to mention the offside goal.I went through it frame byframe on Sky,s goal express and Paterson was stood behind all Boltons back 4.He even turned round mid celebration to see if it was ruled offside.Not to say we played well.Will continue discussion after Derby County match.

It's hard to comment on the title of this thread without seeing the game but I would imagine there is a very good reason for the result - and I bet the Arsenal youngsters/U18s are far technically superior to ours...

The youth teams don't play for results. Most academy teams/young players who come up against the Bolton Academy are encouraged to try out new things (including risky things) constantly without any emphasis on the consequences results wise. What that means is that a youngster, coached properly, develops a confidence and becomes increasingly comfortable in possession. They learn from their errors but they learn even more from being allowed to experiment.

Here is an example...
An Arsenal youth player playing at left back is stretching to get back and deal with a ball played down his side to the Bolton winger. The Arsenal player gets their first. He is encouraged to attempt to bring the ball under control and either find a simple pass or turn around and dribble past/take on the winger.
The flip side of that is...
The exact same situation but the other way around, the young Bolton player is encouraged not to try and control the ball but rather get there first and try to kick it out for a throw in or corner. "If in doubt kick it out."

While the Arsenal player runs the risk of losing possession and conceding a goal, in the end he will be the player who learns how to control a ball well, learns how to retain possession in a tight situation and will be the player who ultimately has confidence in his own ability. It will be easy for the Arsenal player to be taught in the future to not take unnecessary risks when results are at stake - it will be more difficult for the Bolton player to learn all the other aspects at a later stage because once he hits the adult team the results start to matter and there will never be that same platform there to enable him to develop his own abilities.

So. In conclusion. Arsenal will perhaps make mistakes at youth level which lead to losing games. But the coaches will not be bothered about it so much. In the Bolton camp (unfortunately) in my opinion, the results seem to matter more to the staff. Don't get me wrong, they are still very good compared to your average Joe coaches and the youngsters are still very good players but the mentalities are different.

Interesting. Reminds me of the email I was sent by my pal who saw Bolton youth play Rochdale.