How good are United's title-winning U18s, and why?
What you need to know about MUFC's flourishing Academy side
If you’re new here: I’m Harry Robinson, a 23-year-old Stretford Ender, freelance football journalist and the author of The Men Who Made Manchester United. I write about things I’m passionate about, mainly MUFC, history, youth football and travel.
⚽ The Academy Briefing: United U18s champions
“Well done, well done, congratulations,” says Erik ten Hag. Manchester United’s Under-18s stop eating their mini-burgers, steak and grilled fish to shake hands with the manager just a few hours after securing the U18 Premier League North title with victory at Wolves.
It’s United’s first such title since the 2017/18 season. The players of that squad, coached by recently-named Championship Manager of the Year Kieran McKenna, have gone on to make a combined 208 appearances for the first team and play 2,450 games in senior football overall. They play in the Premier League, Championship, Scottish Premiership, La Liga and Bundesliga.
This time around, it’s a well-balanced, highly talented squad. They celebrated together in the first-team canteen, where a good spread was prepared. Many of them have eaten here before, having trained with the first team. Partly as a result of this, but also injuries and a deliberate philosophy of spread game time, a remarkable total of 33 players have been used across the season, which began with a 14-game winning streak. The young Reds have lost only one game, coping with injuries to key players and winning a variety of ways. There have been the dominant thrashings, including of rivals Liverpool away recently (9-1) but also impressive comebacks (Forest and Sunderland in September) and victories with ten men.
Here’s everything you need to know about this young United team, their coach, the philosophy and culture behind their success and what the future holds…
The coach: Adam Lawrence
Bermondsey-born, Adam has put the hard yards into his coaching career. He started with Millwall’s community scheme, working in schools, local housing estates and on holiday camps.
"That gave me my first taste and enthusiasm for coaching and working with young players,” he told me earlier this season.
He progressed into Millwall’s Academy system before two contrasting roles, one out in the USA and another working for Lambeth Council, coaching in deprived areas. He finally began the journey on the path that’s taken him to United with a full-time coaching role at Charlton Athletic. There, he worked his way up to become Head of Coaching, primarily involved with the U18s-U21s. He completed his UEFA Pro License in 2019, learning alongside Steven Gerrard and former United coach Paul McGuinness.
“Then the opportunity came to join this club which was obviously fantastic for me. As a young aspiring coach, you’re always thinking that Manchester United are the holy grail of youth development in the country and world-renowned. To have the opportunity to move to the club three years ago was a very proud moment and a real privilege.” — Adam Lawrence
Adam describes time working with young players as “very precious” because of the influence you can have over a significant period of time. He described his core message as this:
“First and foremost, you want to create a positive environment where the players come in every day and feel inspired about the programme, the staff and the place in which they’re trying to develop. Obviously it’s Man United so it’s a fantastic place to come in every day, but you want them to have that bounce, so you want the programme to be varied on and off and pitch. Then you want those close bonds with the players, developing relationships, because that’s where the real energy amongst the goal staff goes, towards their individual programmes.
“You want young players to back themselves and believe in themselves when they’re with us. They’ve all got aspirations, they want to play for the club at first-team level. We all know that’s not easy to do. As long as they’re showing that belief and courage in themselves and have daily habits that help them achieve that, ultimately they’ll find a level of the game that maximises their potential.”
The coaching staff
While Adam Lawrence is the centre of the U18s coaching staff, there are two key things to note.
Firstly, United have emphasised a smooth transition between age groups recently.
So, Travis Binnion is U21s manager but also Head of Player and Coaching Development for the whole U17-U21 age group. So he works daily with Adam, who is U18s head coach and also Head of Player Development for the U13-U16 age group.
It seems a sensible approach that encourages collaboration and knowledge-sharing across the age groups which, in other set-ups, can feel a little disparate or inwardly competitive.
Secondly, the Academy have recruited staff just as impressively as players. For every Garnacho signing, there’s also been a quality staff member added.
That includes three recent Premier League footballers: Paul McShane (now working with the U15s, previously U17-U23 player-coach), Tom Huddlestone (McShane’s successor as player-coach) and Phil Jones, who’s worked with the U18s as he completes his UEFA A Coaching License.
The majority of United’s coaching staff, however, are not ex-pros. Although there are many ex-Reds who would like key roles, the club have chosen not to pursue that path. Many of the Academy’s employees have a history of teaching, often PE, or went to university and grafted their way up. They’re all excellent communicators, which is what really matters.
There’s a good mix of newly arrived and long-time members of staff. Colin Little is U18s assistant, having had a big impact on United’s youngsters since 2009, including Marcus Rashford. One player joked when Marcus broke through, “he should give half his wages to Colin!”
Behind the scenes, there have been significant improvements in communication, sports science and injury prevention in the last two years, led by Head of Performance Matt Walker, poached from Cambridge United in 2022.
The recruitment hasn’t stopped, either. The latest major hire was Mick Matthews, who left the FA after 26 years to become Academy Coach Development Manager. United has once again become the place to be for ambitious, quality youth developers.
Always interesting is how these staff start anew when joining the club. For example, Travis Binnion was Academy Manager at Sheffield United but began at Carrington as Head of U14-U16 Development. His assistant Dave Hughes ran Cardiff’s Academy. Adam Lawrence was Head of Coaching at Charlton but began with United’s U16s. Martin Drury was Head of Coaching and Player Development at Bradford City and now works with United’s U16s. This kind of quality recruitment instead of filling roles with only former players is paying off.
The philosophy behind the success
The style of play has been exciting and free-flowing, with the goalkeeper regularly involved in build-up. It’s what fans would love to see from the first team and it’s fair to say Erik ten Hag has some influence on it, but on a day-to-day basis this has required impressive coaching, and more. The team have regularly looked fitter than their opponents, worked harder and been more resilient. Add in the moments of quality you expect from talented kids at United’s Academy and wins should come.
That resilience and composure was, it’s fair to say, lacking in the FA Youth Cup, the major disappointment of the season, but lessons seemed to have been learnt. They bounced back from defeat to Swindon Town by beating Man City in the league. And the real test of that composure will be next Tuesday’s U18 Premier League Cup final against Manchester City and the North-South league final against Chelsea in May.
Here are some key contributors to success away from the team’s style of play…
Stretching the players overseas
This season began for United not with their first U18 Premier League game against Middlesbrough (a 4-0 win) but with participation in two overseas tournaments. The first was SuperCupNI — formerly the Milk Cup — where one age group were beaten by Hertha Berlin, Liverpool and Valencia and the other topped their group. The second was the Mladen Ramljak Memorial Tournament in Croatia where they lost 3-0 in the final to Feyenoord after a memorable 5-4 win over Dinamo Zagreb. Then, between their opening two league fixtures, the Reds competed at the Otten Cup in the Netherlands.
“I think one of the special things as a club is the programme we're able to put in place in terms of the levels of the competitions and tours and tournaments,” Adam Lawrence told me earlier this season. “They've been amazing for the players.”
Judging by results, those pre/early season challenges certainly seemed to help them hit the ground running. They won 14 on the bounce. During the season, other experiences have been added, behind-closed-doors friendlies against senior opposition, small-sided competitions in Germany (U18s) and the Netherlands (U19s) before a four-day trip to Nice in March to take on AS Monaco and OGC Nice in highly competitive friendlies. The first game back from that trip was the 9-1 drubbing of Liverpool.
Recruitment
This team is typical of United’s approach in its mixture of pathways.
Captain Finley McAllister (a Salford-born home-and-away matchgoer), Shea Lacey and several others joined the club at the pre-Academy stage, that is before their ninth birthday. This is the path that Kobbie Mainoo and Marcus Rashford took.
Others were recruited at a young age from other professional clubs, like Ethan Williams from Rochdale, Jack Kingdon from Morecambe and James Scanlon from Derby County.
Full-back Jaydan Kamason came through the Emerging Talent Programme, founded four years ago, from which nearly 50 players have been recruited.
Then you get the final input of players who join as first-year scholars, aged 16. Alejandro Garnacho and Willy Kambwala followed this path.
Those who do so now cannot be signed from abroad due to Brexit regulations, so they tend to be the finest talents from other English clubs. It’s a competitive field. United signed highly-rated goalkeeper Elyh Harrison from Stevenage, Jack and Tyler Fletcher from Manchester City, Harry Amass from Watford and Gabriele Biancheri from Cardiff. While Tyler has been unfortunate with injury, the other four have been stand-out players in the title-winning side.
The recruitment of players, then, has been just as good as that of staff. Luke Federonko leads that team. He was a talented young player at Barnsley and backed for success but, in his own words, “didn’t work hard enough.” After leaving, he played for several non-league clubs, worked as a manual labourer on the railways and couldn’t work out where to go next. He enrolled at Manchester Metropolitan University to study sport and exercise science and worked as a part-time Academy coach at Sheffield United. Nick Cox gave him a full-time role and, once he’d worked his way up to become Head of Recruitment (U7-U16) there, moved over to United. It’s a fantastic story.
Development > results
The reason the Academy are particularly pleased with this success is because it has not come at the expense of anything else. Their mantra, for which Nick Cox publicly bangs the drum, is to prioritise development over results and individuals over the team. This U18s team hasn’t wavered from its style of play, has given opportunities to several U16s players and five or six changes to the starting line-up have been made every game. In that sense, it’s been good proof of Nick’s philosophy: “success is the byproduct of brilliant coaching, development and experiences.”
What the future holds
First up, an U18 Premier League Cup final against Manchester on Tuesday 23 April. And then a North-South league final against Chelsea, likely in mid-May.
Longer term, these players clearly have talent and it’s a really well-balanced squad. In fact, some of the most highly-rated youngsters have barely played this season. Shea Lacey, fresh off the back of his first professional contract, has only just returned from injury to play his seventh game out of United’s 22. Midfielder Jayce Fitzgerald has been absent since January. Sixteen-year-old Amir Ibragimov has more often been with the U16s or U21s.
Lacey, Ibragimov and Bendito Mantato (an electric winger with five goals in six games, aged only 16) may be seen as the pick of the bunch, alongside Harrison (GK) and Amass (LB). It’s notable that Lacey has been involved in first-team training almost immediately after returning from injury. But there are great players here who have come on significantly during the season like Ethan Wheatley, who earned a spot on the first-team bench at the weekend, and James Scanlon, who made his senior debut for Gibraltar in March. Jacob Devaney, a 16-year-old midfielder, has shown real quality at times, as have Fletcher, Zach Baumann, Finley McAllister and Ruben Curley in the same position. Scottish youth internationals Louis Jackson and Jack Kingdon have been dependable in central defence.
United have lots to be positive about with this group and the next step may be finding loans for the 18-year-olds ready to be pushed on even more. Harrison may be one, Jackson and Kingdon could be others and Wheatley will benefit from beginning the adjustment to men’s football soon, but perhaps not just yet.
For now, it’s a great opportunity to celebrate something going fantastically right at United. And keep your eyes peeled for a new project which celebrates the Academy in full…
😃 What I’ve enjoyed this week:
📺 1970: VICTORIAN TEENAGERS reminisce | Yesterday's Witness | Voice of the People | BBC Archive
That’s all for today. Thanks for reading. If you’ve enjoyed this, feel free to share it with a mate. Have a great rest of your week!