Richie Wellens looks ahead to facing one of the world’s best Academy teams when Rovers host Manchester City U21s in the Papa John’s Trophy.
With the City first-team heading to Wycombe Wanderers in the Carabao Cup, it is expected that City will field a young team in Tuesday’s cup clash with Rovers, but Wellens warns of the quality every player in the City Academy has.
On Man City:
“They will have elite technical and tactical ability because of the system at the City Group and what they do. They’re brought up through the age groups to do what the first team do so it’s very structured.
“In terms of their age group, they are world class. We’re talking about a set of players who will be the best in the world for their age.
“We’ll have some young players ourselves so we’ll need to cope with their technical ability, but we’ll have some power upfront which we’ll want to use.”
On team selection:
“We’ll make changes because we want to be fair to everyone and keep everyone on their toes.
“There’s a number of players that have been training well but haven’t been playing so it’ll be a reward for them.
“Joseph Olowu will start.
“Tiago is going to start because he had the break where he couldn’t play. We envisage him playing 90 minutes.
“It’ll be a good opportunity, a nice night and an excellent pitch again so they need to go out, enjoy it and express themselves.”
On the mood at the training ground:
“The mood is lifted because it was a good result, but I think the lads know that they have so much more to give.
“The players are doing the basics right, they stuck in there when things were going against us.
“I don’t think we’re anywhere near the levels that we can reach long term.
“This group have so much more to give.”