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Crystal Palace U23 vs Middlesbrough U23


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Hi,

Apologies for the intrusion.  I covered an U23 match of yours against Newcastle back in November, and planned to do so next time you played down south and I was nearby.  I went to the match against Crystal Palace today, which 'Boro absolutely dominated, and put together this match report with photos.  

https://thegrassrootstourist.com/2019/12/02/crystal-palace-u23/

Hope it's of interest to some.

Regards,

GRTourist

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24 minutes ago, Denzel Zanzibar said:

Great article, although I didn't know Craig Hignett was our u23's coach.

I thought it was Graeme Lee?

You're correct.  I can't even account for where I found that now, but it's miles wrong what with Craig Hignett having recently been sacked by Hartlepool.

 

It's been amended in the article now.  Thanks for pointing it out.

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7 hours ago, GRTourist said:

You're correct.  I can't even account for where I found that now, but it's miles wrong what with Craig Hignett having recently been sacked by Hartlepool.

 

It's been amended in the article now.  Thanks for pointing it out.

No worries. Apart from that your level of research is astounding!

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Very good article mate.

Also very interesting to see the youth team (U-23's in this case) are still persisting with Woodgate's preferred style of football as mentioned at the start of the season. Could this be a small shred of evidence that the club want to continue to strive for an overall identity? The first team picture at the moment I feel we have definitely moved towards a functional type of football (except we haven't been picking up the points). Potentially because we do not have the type of player required to play this style in certain positions.

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50 minutes ago, DanFromDownSouth said:

Very good article mate.

Also very interesting to see the youth team (U-23's in this case) are still persisting with Woodgate's preferred style of football as mentioned at the start of the season. Could this be a small shred of evidence that the club want to continue to strive for an overall identity? The first team picture at the moment I feel we have definitely moved towards a functional type of football (except we haven't been picking up the points). Potentially because we do not have the type of player required to play this style in certain positions.

I think that you might be on to something there Dan. I also thought that we may be trying to grow the identity through the youth set up and are playing functional football in order to stay in the championship with the players we currently have on contract. When the vast majority are out of contract it should be interesting to see what happens with incomings.

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14 hours ago, Blanco said:

I think that you might be on to something there Dan. I also thought that we may be trying to grow the identity through the youth set up and are playing functional football in order to stay in the championship with the players we currently have on contract. When the vast majority are out of contract it should be interesting to see what happens with incomings.

Yeah I agree with this. Set the U-23 team up how we want to play long term to look at potential players who suit that system. That should give a better indication who might be ready for the step into the 1st team when we want to revert back to playing how we intended. Also gives them a better idea on key areas we are limited in to strengthen what's missing from both the 1st team and youth teams. 

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So, inside two games, Woodgate was able to determine that the current first team squad couldn't play that way and changed to more functional football, which has also been largely unsuccessful, but we just kept playing it anyway?  Once this season is done with and we've lost a number of these first team players, we will then change back to this other way of playing, with a squad made up of lots of new signings, some of the younger lads and whoever is left over in the current first team squad?

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