Another high-scoring win for Under-18s

Our Under-18s continued their free-scoring start to the season with an impressive 5-1 win at Fulham on Saturday.

Having beaten Crystal Palace 6-4 on the opening day last weekend, Stuart Lewis’ side again racked up the goals at Motspur Park with Ellis Lehane, Ronny Moncur, Luca Williams-Barnett and Herbie James on target before summer signing George Feeney rounded off the scoring with his first goal for the Club.

The Cottagers’ only reply came via Basmil Lubega in the first half as the sides went in level at 1-1 at the interval, but we pulled away after the restart to register another fully-deserved win.

Striker Lehane gave us a 10th-minute lead, latching onto Williams-Barnett’s through ball and lifting it over goalkeeper Marco Underwood for his third goal in two games.

Fulham hit back 11 minutes later as they played through the pitch from a goal-kick with Lubega slotting across goal and into the bottom corner, but we regained the lead six minutes into the second half when left-back Calum Logan intercepted the ball, Williams-Barnett picked it up and played in Moncur who took a touch and finished well from 12 yards, marking his competitive Under-18s bow with a goal.

Two minutes later we were in firm control at 3-1. James attacked down the left and found Lehane in the box, who flicked the ball into the path of Williams-Barnett for the young winger to finish brilliantly while off-balance at the first time of asking. James added his own name to the scoresheet on 70 minutes, finishing from inside the box after Moncur’s cross had been parried into his path by Underwood.

Striker Reiss Elliott-Parris went through one-on-one with the keeper moments after coming off the bench but could only fire wide, but that didn’t dent our confidence and seven minutes from time we had goal number five, Tynan Thompson picking up a loose ball on the left-hand side and delivering a low cross which Feeney converted from inside the area, setting the seal on a fine day’s work for our youngsters.

‘There were some really pleasing elements to our play’

Under-18s Coach Stuart was delighted to see his charges hit the goals trail for the second week in a row, having also enjoyed a fruitful pre-season between the sticks.

“It was excellent to score five goals – that’s 11 in two games now – so Brad (Allen) and I were particularly pleased with that,” he said. “It’s testament to the players in the front half of the pitch that we’ve scored a lot of goals, but we’ve also been working hard with our defenders in terms of their concentration with and without the ball. It’s always a good test at Fulham but we stood up well to that challenge and produced a really good performance – there were some really pleasing elements to our play and we deserved the three points.”

Stuart made two changes to the starting line-up with Roman Egan-Riley coming in for the suspended Malachi Hardy at the back and goalscorer Moncur replacing Thompson further forward. He explained: “There’s a lot of competition for places – the lads did well today and Ronny Moncur scored an excellent, really important goal which he finished in a composed manner. He’s trained well throughout pre-season and in the first couple of weeks of the campaign – you want that competition within the group, so there were a lot of positives for us.”