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.
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.
With the Manchester Senior Cup Final on the agenda this coming week, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer took a number of those likely to feature in that clash with Bolton to the Lake District on Saturday for a friendly against Unibond Premier side Kendal Town. A mixed reserve and academy selection recorded an impressive 7-2 win at Parkside Road, a handy warm-up for the big game on Tuesday and, despite the scoreline, a great end to an excellent season for the hosts.
