Aldershot Town Academy Manager Ross McNeilly believed that the game was “comfortable” after his u18 side won 3-1 as they travelled away against Sparsholt College on Friday in the ESFA u18s National Schools Super League.
The game was dominated by The Shots and they got their goal before half-time. Nasim Regragui was the man to break the deadlock and gave The Shots a 1-0 lead going into half-time, although could’ve scored more having spurned chances to further their advantage.
Missed opportunities wouldn’t barren Aldershot Town for long as they finally doubled their lead through Jaan Stanley. The game was still controlled by the visitors as Sparsholt College failed to get going throughout the game and were punished as The Shots put the game beyond doubt through George Britton.
Sparsholt managed to get a consolation goal with a last-minute penalty but Aldershot held out for the win and McNeilly thought that the lads didn’t have to be “excellent” to overcome their opponents.
“It was comfortable, it was a comfortable game,” he said.
“We didn’t really have to be excellent but the scoreline shows that we did enough.”
The result now means that Aldershot are still unbeaten in this competition and go even closer to the finals which they pushing very hard to get to. McNeilly gave his thoughts on what the result means for the u18s:
“We are now group winners. So we qualify for the last 32 in the u18s National Schools Super League which is really really good. We’ve qualified with a 100% record.”
McNeilly also went on to talk about how the lads have bounced back from previous failings in the FA Youth Cup to beat a side who had beaten their Youth Cup opponents before.
“We went out of the FA Youth Cup to Yeovil Town but this team beat Yeovil in the next round, so I guess that shows how far we’ve come and the fact that we didn’t do great against Yeovil but this game we’ve managed to beat Sparsholt pretty comfortably.”
The Shots will find out who they have in the last 32 on 27 January 2020 which is when the draw takes place.
