Manchester City’s EDS began an important weekend for their youth with a 1-0 win in the U21 Manchester derby. Ashley Smith-Brown’s first-half strike proved to be the difference between City and league leaders United.

As the game was being played, Jason Wilcox’s U18’s side were declared winners of the BU18PL North Division.

And that kicked off a potentially monumental weekend for the Academy set-up, as the club looks to reap the rewards of the outstanding £200m City Football Academy facility.

With a number of City’s young players expected to feature in the FA Cup on Sunday, Simon Davies was forced to field a somewhat weakened side at the Etihad Stadium.

The likes of Bersant Celina, Manu Garcia and Brandon Barker were all absent against current table-toppers United.

The sides met just over a week ago in the same competition, with United edging out the Blues through a Joe Rothwell first half strike.

But it was a much-improved display from City here on their home patch. They were ahead inside 18 minutes when Ashley Smith-Brown drilled a shot low into the bottom corner of Joel Pereira’s net. After a scare at the beginning of the game where Angelino was forced to make a goal-line clearance, City took the initiative and were on top for large spells.

City had to be stern at the back against the league leaders though, with Angus Gunn pulling off a fine save as United piled on the pressure. United’s in-form striker Will Keane was marshalled impressively by the centre-back pairing of Ellis Plummer and Kean Bryan.

City’s No.9 Isaac Buckley-Ricketts, a regular for the Under 18’s side, stepped up to the EDS side and was a thorn in United’s side with his pace, energy and link-up play.

The visitors piled on the pressure towards the end but City kept up their energy levels and moved up to third in the Barclays U21 Premier League table.

EDS boss Simon Davies was pleased with the performance, especially after the defeat in the reverse fixture.

Speaking after the game he said:

I thought we started the game off a lot better than we did a week or so ago and that was a big thing for us today. We played really well last game against Leicester. A big message to the boys was how we were going to start the game and how we were going to be really competitive – realising that we’re playing against a team that are top of the league. I thought second half they came at us a little more and we managed the game quite well so overall it was a really satisfying result.

There were a number of key U21 players not involved in the game today because of first-team commitments and Davies is excited about the prospect of seeing a plethora of his youngsters mixing it with established Premier League players.

There will be some boys involved and I’m looking forward to seeing how they’ll pitch themselves against top Premier League players. There will be opportunities for the boys tomorrow at Chelsea and it’s about when the opportunity comes, like it will be at every football club for a young player, whichever way it comes is not really important but you must take it and they are going to have an opportunity tomorrow.

Teams:

City: Gunn, Horsfield, Plummer, Bryan, Smith-Brown, Nemane (Nmecha), Glendon, Kongolo (Tattum), Angelino, Bytyqi, Buckley-Ricketts.

United: J.Pereira, El Fitouri, Williams, Fosu-Mensah, Riley, Willock, Redmond, Rothwell (Mitchell), Weir, Keane (McTominay), Rashford.