So that’s it… 2008/09 is in the history books. A great season for the reserve and academy sides at United, and indeed for young players at the club in general, with many making the step up to the first team and playing their part in another successful campaign. Over the next few weeks we’ll be reviewing the season here at United Youth in a number of ways and dishing out the inevitable awards, and on that latter point, we want your input.
On the sidebar to the right, you’ll notice a poll where you can vote for your academy player of the season, so… er, please do! Bear in mind that this award is for achievement and contributions with the Under-18 side, so while, say, Danny Welbeck has been academy eligible, almost all of his good work this season has been with the reserves or the first team, so he probably wouldn’t come into contention. You can still vote for him of course – we have picked out seven standout performers, but the ‘Other’ option is there for you to vote for anyone you like.
A quick word or two on our seven standouts:
Nicky Ajose
Top scorer for the U18s with 10 goals in just 17 starts.
Joe Dudgeon
Mr Consistency at left-back all year.
Matty James
Fantastic first half of the campaign saw him pick up six goals before being promoted to the reserves full-time.
Kiko Macheda
Made a major name for himself with his first-team exploits, but also found the net 8 times in 13 starts for the academy in the first half of the season.
Oliver Norwood
Played in 28 of a possible 29 games and scored nine goals from midfield. Inherited the captain’s armband from James.
Davide Petrucci
An extremely promising first season at the club, with 5 goals in 13 starts before injury cut his campaign short.
Scott Wootton
Only missed two games all season, a key part of one of the stingiest defences in academy football.
We’ll give you a few days to vote before running the next of the handful of polls we have lined up, and the results will be revealed along with our own awards in a few weeks time.
On a general note, thanks to everyone for reading the site all season, for contributing comments and for providing info, it’s all greatly appreciated and makes the effort worthwhile. As ever, any feedback, suggestions or comments are welcomed, be they about things you want to see covered or things we’ve covered already.
Obviously the close season gives everyone a chance to take a breather, and updates will naturally be more sporadic, but we’ll be continuing to cover everything relevant, from transfers to friendly announcements to international commitments, so keep checking back and you’ll not miss a thing. Summer means holidays, so there will be periods where we can’t update for a few days at a time, so please bear with us – we’ll endeavour to catch up with anything and everything that occurs while we’re away.
With the official Blue Stars tournament website lacking somewhat in terms of the accuracy of its match stats (scorers, lineups etc) and the detail of its match reports, we’re delighted to be able to bring you an in-depth and accurate report on United’s two days in Zurich from someone who was there and saw the action unfold.
United’s Belgian centre-back Ritchie de Laet has revealed to the Belgian media that he has been offered a new one-year deal with the Reds.
Northern Ireland manager Nigel Worthington has included ten uncapped players in his squad for next month’s international friendly against Italy, including United youngsters Craig Cathcart and Corry Evans.
Nemanja Vidic may have stolen all the headlines after scooping the Players’ Player of the Year and Sir Matt Busby Fans’ Player of the Year gongs at last night’s Manchester United Player Awards for 2009, but he wasn’t the only one taking home some silverware. As well as Cristiano Ronaldo recieving a second successive Goal of the Season award, there was recognition for two of the club’s most promising youngsters – James Chester and Federico Macheda being named (respectively) as the Denzil Haroun Reserve Player of the Year and the Jimmy Murphy Young Player of the Year.
With everyone associated with Manchester United still buzzing after yesterday’s title celebrations, attention tonight turns towards recognising and rewarding those responsible for that terrific achievement and everything the club has accomplished (thus far…) this season. Much of the focus will naturally be on who will win the Sir Matt Busby Player of the Year Award, as well as the Players’ Player and Goal of the Season awards, but of particular interest to contributors and readers of this site will of course be the Reserve Player and Young Player winners.
England’s U17 side have crashed out of the 2009 UEFA European U17 Championships, missing out on a place at this year’s FIFA U17 World Cup in the process, after a 1-0 defeat at the hands of Turkey in their final group game.
