That match was the sixth time I had seen the Under 18s play this season, four of them had ended in deserved defeats and one had been drawn. Based on those five games alone I would have said that, apart from one or two, the current crop of youngsters were nothing special and that the first team were not going to benefit much from our Under 18 team.
However, the one other game I had seen was a well deserved 3-1 win over a previously unbeaten Spurs side that had apparently drawn with their first team in a practice match a few days earlier.
On that day, City looked a good team and maybe this was why Neil Ardley said what he did after that miserable Watford match - he knew that the side was capable of much better than they had been showing in most matches.
Whilst last night's 3-0 FA Youth Cup win over Blackpool wasn't a perfect performance by any means, the team did put some high quality stuff together in the second half especially and, by the end, Blackpool could have few complaints about the margin of their defeat (it probably should have been more really).
City scored at the begining and end of the first half, in between times though Blackpool were probably the better side as they certainly had more of the game territorially. The visitors lacked a cutting edge though and, apart from one save with his feet by Jordan Santiago from a close range effort, they never really looked like scoring.
Perhaps a combination of Blackpool's lack of firepower and City's goal after two minutes when Leigh Smith comfortably scored after good approach work by Rhys Kelleher made for some complacency in the City side, but, for a good half hour or so there wasn't much to make you forget how bloody cold it was! City did have the ball in the net again around the twenty minute mark only for it to be disallowed for offside and Blackpool's keeper, who had apparently been in the first team squad in recent weeks, made a sprawling save from a Irahim Farah header, but, apart from that, there was little to indicate that City would end up winning as comfortably as they did.
However, a couple of minutes before the break, City scored a goal of a quality which was completely out of place with what had gone before as a clever flick by Aaron Wildig created space for Leigh Mason who set Kelleher free on the right and his fine, quickly delivered cross, was nodded past the flat footed keeper by Jonathan Meades.
As it turned out, that goal more or less signalled the end of the game as a meaningful contest because, from then on, City played the sort of pass and move football that their coaches want to see from them and Blackpool never really came up with an answer to it.
All that was missing from the team's second half display was the ability to finish off some of the flowing moves that they put together. Ironically, the only goal that was scored arrived with about twenty minutes to go courtesy of some poor control by the Blackpool left back after he had seemingly halted another smooth City build up - substitute Nathaniel Jarvis taking advantage of the error to score with virtually his first touch of the ball.
With City passing the ball so much better and Blackpool tiring as a result of this, the chances came and went on a regular basis. Skipper Aaron Wildig increasingly showed why he has been training with the first team lately as he and Farah took control in central midfield in a manner which the senior side haven't managed in ages, but he was let down by his failure to finish off three good chances that he had played in a big part in creating.
However, this shouldn't detract from a good performance by Wildig and others such as wingers Kelleher and Meades were also able to show that they are both talented and inventive footballers. A word to about centre half Evans (sorry, don't know his first name) who is still qualified for the Under 16s but, in the three games I have seen him play in at least, has not looked out of place at all at this level.
All of those I mentioned tended to come to the fore in the second half as City dominated, but there was one player who managed to look a class act in the first half when City weren't playing well. I can't remember leaving a game in which I have seen Adam Matthews play when I haven't thought he was one of the best players on the pitch. If anything, right back Matthews was not as noticeable after the interval last night, but, for me he had done enough already to confirm that he has a chance of making a career for himself in the game - while it seems that inconsistency is a bit of a problem for some of our talented Under 18 players, it certainly doesn't appear to be the case with Matthews.