A late headed goal from Stephen Mfuni wasn’t quite enough to inspire a comeback for City after Ethan Wheatley’s first half brace proved too big a mountain to climb at the Leigh Sports Village on Tuesday evening.
But City fought relentlessly in the second half and Wilkinson reflected positively on the result and is confident his players will take key learnings before our FA Youth Cup final against Leeds United at the Etihad.
“I’m very proud,” began Wilkinson. “We say about these games being a good opportunity to learn about the players and I think when you’re 2-0 down in a final, you do learn and you see how they adapt and behave in those moments and I thought we did really well on that front.
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“I thought in the last sort of 60 minutes we did what we needed to do to chase a game of football without leaving yourself wide open.
“So yeah I thought that was a really pleasing thing to take and we can certainly take some learnings from it.
“I think the key learning for us is we’ve got another cup final in two weeks and we’ve got to start that game and pay better attention to the small details in the first 30/40 minutes and make sure that you don’t put yourself in a position where it’s hard to win the game.”
Wilkinson reflected further on City’s performance and spoke about how the team will loop to regroup ahead of the FA Youth Cup final.
You can watch his full post-match interview via the video player above…
