Mark Delaney has reflected positively on Aston Villa’s experience in the EFL Trophy – despite a run of tough results.
The Young Lions were eliminated with a loss against Carlisle United last Tuesday night, with all three of their group matches ending in defeat.
However, Delaney, along with the senior coaching staff at the club, feels the positives of playing against Football League sides far outweighs the negatives.
He said: “When you look at the results, you’d expect me to say that it was a total waste of time and that we got nothing from it.
“We knew what to expect before we entered it and we had many chats with the first team staff saying how much they wanted us to be in it and how much it would benefit all of us as staff as well as players.
“The manager is fully behind us on that. We, as a club, think it’s a really important part of their development plans moving forward.
“Hopefully we can continue in that competition because you want players to learn and get better from it.”
Villa’s final game against Carlisle saw a marked improvement in performance compared to their first two matches in the competition – despite the fact that international call-ups caused Delaney to include a number of players from the Under-18s.
The coach singled out 16-year-old Lamare Bogarde for special praise, with the young Dutch player’s performance highlighting how important these games can be for their development.
He said: “First and foremost, it makes the player realise that we play a lot of games against teams that try and play football out from the back, and they only get those experiences.
“Whereas these three matches have been totally different, and they have to look at how they can change their game to deal with what different styles of football throw at them.
“We’ve been beaten not by the ability of players to play football; they’ve been beaten by a different brand of football which they find difficult to deal with because they’re not exposed to it enough during the season.”
Delaney and the Under-23s resume Premier League 2 action when they take on Stoke City on Monday night (ko 7pm).
