Ben Wilkinson has labelled City’s performance in our resounding 8-0 win over Wolves Under-18s as ‘excellent’.

And our Under-18s head coach believes the showing in the Premier League U18 North encounter was a reflection of City’s true self after a draw, win and loss in our previous three matches.

After sharing the spoils with league leaders Sunderland last time out, which kept us second in the league, we produced a scintillating showing against the Midlands side on Saturday.

The display at the CFA produced eight goals without reply, thus raising our goal difference and applying pressure to the table topping Black Cats - a fact Wilkinson was delighted with.

“I thought we played very well today. We’ve had a couple of games recently where we’ve not been at our best in terms of the technical level and our, sort of, reaction to one or two things,” he said.

“I thought today we were excellent, we played great football at a technically really, really high level. We attacked the right spaces with a good end product and I thought we had a really good game, to be honest.

“They were completely contrasting matches [Wolves to Sunderland]. Sunderland was a difficult game and a real battle and maybe we didn’t get our football out as much as we’d have liked.

“It was a tough game, but today I thought from minute one we played really well and with a good tempo and intensity.

“Positionally we looked right in terms of picking up the right spaces and occupying players. I thought we were really good from the off today.”

There were seven different goalscorers in the eight-goal haul over Wolves - as Matty Whittingham bagged a first half brace.

Emilio Lawrence and Justin Obvoavwoduo were the other names on the scoresheet prior to the interval, before Tomas Galvez, Joel Ndala, Alfie Harrison and Ashton Muir completed the rout.

And Wilkinson explained how the high volume of scorers is a product of the City gameplan, executed across all age groups.

“It’s pleasing as a group and a squad. We know we’ve got a lot of players, certainly in our front five, who can score and assist,” the boss continued.

“The way we play really, as long as we get our positions in the box right from crosses and our details right, the goals should be shared around.

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“It’s really pleasing and good for those players as well in terms of their own confidence.

“We know we have some top players in attacking positions.

“We’ve had some injuries to one or two of them through the course of this season. But we’ve got everyone fit now and some top players.

“The challenge for those players is to replicate that and to show a level of consistency.

“They were brilliant today but we’re going to have to go to Nottingham Forest on Tuesday and deliver the same level technically and the same end product through different players.”