Sunderland Under-21 manager Graeme Murty has stressed the need for him and his coaching staff to ensure that the young players are given lessons about senior football where they will play against someone as strong and powerful as Jarrad Branthwaite.
Murty’s side took on Everton’s Under-21 team in a Premier League 2 fixture recently, a match that ended in a 4-3 win for the Toffees.
It was an occasion where Everton gave minutes to injury-absentee Branthwaite, who played for the full course of the match.
Murty was left impressed by the fact that the match provided an opportunity for a young player like Trey Ogunsuyi to lock horns with Branthwaite, who Everton valued at £80m to £90m in the summer.
“We have got a lot of first-team players on the pitch but the biggest thing I am looking at is Jarrod Branthwaite marking Trey Ogunsuyi”, Murty told his club’s media.
“So Trey has got that. He has got a £80-90m centre-half defending him and he worked really hard for 90 minutes.”
On what is required to teach the young players to help them take the huge leap from academy football to first-team football, the manager added: “And in the 91st minute he had a free header from six yards out. You work all game for that opportunity, that moment and that’s where we need to help him understand.
“That you are going to have times when it is really difficult, you are going to play against someone who is as strong and powerful as him and you will one get opportunity and that is something he needs to recognise.
“And we need to make sure that we support that clinical ruthless power of – I don’t want to call it men’s football – but adult football, senior football which becomes results-based because you are going to get measured on those moments.”
Sunderland gave a chance to summer recruit Milan Aleksic in the match against Everton Under-21s.
