Mehmet Ali spoke to us after Sunday’s 1-1 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion under-21s in Premier League 2.
He discussed why he felt the match was an excellent advert for PL2, as goals from Khayon Edwards and Freddie Simmonds ensured the points were shared at Mangata I thought it was an excellent game of football today,” he said. “Both sides really took the game to their opponent. Both teams were aggressive without the ball, trying to win it back. That resulted in a lot of balls going over from both teams and I thought we did that well with our pace from Nath, Kabs and Khayon in our front line. That caused them a problem. We lacked a bit of control when we got into the final third and we didn’t do that as well as we’d have hoped, but I was really pleased to go 1-0 up.
“In the first half I thought we looked comfortable. They’ve got a lot of good threats and are doing really well this year but I thought we nullified that really well.
“In the second half, losing Josh Nichols was difficult for us. We had to have a tactical change. Trying to protect our lead, they did really well to gain momentum but I thought our boys defended so well with our blocks and desire to stop.
“It’s disappointing for us to concede from a set-piece in the 92nd minute. Fair play to that lad because he had a lot of desire to win the header. Overall a draw is probably a fair result.
“PL2 gets a lot of criticism sometimes in terms of it not being realistic or matching Championship, League One or League Two, but for me that was a proper under-21s fixture where you had two sides going toe to toe with a lot of good quality on the pitch, so I thought it was a really good advert for PL2 football in terms of being competitive. It felt like something was riding on it and that’s what we want. That’s what football’s about.
“We want to create winners and killers that can go on and finish games off and stop goals as well. I felt that today.”
Asked about Zane Monlouis, who made an important tackle right at the end to make sure we took something from the game, Mehmet explained his situation.
“Zane needs to change his stimulus,” he said. “I’m super proud of him and for him to keep the mentality he’s got, doing what he’s doing week in week out shows what type of man he is. I’m really proud of him but for me he’s at the age now where I want him going to play men’s football. He knows that, but he can only control what he can control and the fact he’s in here putting in those performances and leading by example for some of our younger players is really pleasing to see.”
