Man City U18 coach Wilkinson praises players after Cup final defeat

Manchester City Under-18s head coach Ben Wilkinson was proud of his players this week.

The youngsters were beaten 2-1 by Manchester United's Under-18s in the Premier League Cup.

United have now won the league and cup at Under-18 level, but Wilkinson knows his team have many young starlets that may reach first team level.

I'm very proud," he told club media.

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.

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."