West Ham United Under-18s 1-2 Ipswich Town Under-18s
A youthful West Ham United side lost out to Ipswich Town on Saturday morning with Blair Turgott grabbing a late consolation.
Tony Carr has seen many of his second-years promoted to reserve-team duty of late - a number of them impressed in the 1-0 win at Liverpool on Tuesday - meaning he has had to rely heavily on the younger prospects. As such, Ipswich just had the edge at Little Heath, scoring a goal in each half through Byron Lawrence before England U17 attacker Turgott cut the deficit late on.
The goal was one positive, with Turgott combining well with fellow substitutes Dominic Vose and Robert Hall. It was a case of too little, too late, however.
"We battered them in the second half and they broke away and scored with pretty much their only shot," Carr said. "We scored late in the game but had chance after chance to score more. It was a good inter-passing between Hall and Vose before Turgott scored but he had another couple of opportunities and didn't take them.
"We had a lot of the ball but just couldn't break them down and, when we did, we just missed too many chances. We have been conceding soft goals and giving ourselves a mountain to climb in terms of having to rescue matches which the other team haven't deserved. That is the way it has been going."
The Hammers will hope to get back to winning ways with next Saturday's visit of Fulham and, before then, the Academy Director will see a few of his young charges possibly involved in the first-team friendly at Dagenham and Redbridge on Monday night.
"We have got goals in our team. Our biggest problem at the moment is we are defending naively. We are a young side, most of the second years have gone up to the reserves. The Under-16 team from last year found winning quite easy but know they are coming to a higher level against full-time players.
"It is a quick learning curve though and I know we can improve and start to win games. It is certainly not through lack of effort. We have made some basic elementary errors which we can put right. We need to work hard and maybe shuffle things around. We will come back in on Monday and work on our concentration and organisation."
West Ham United: Cowler, Young, Potts, Craig, Driver, Hunt (Turgott 41), Hurley, Lletget (Vose 70), Tombides, Subuola (Hall 70), Fanimo