In what was an absorbing contest at the Joie Stadium, the City Under-21s had to fight back from being 1-0 down at the break to prevail.
However, second half efforts from Christian McFarlane, Sverre Nypan and Ryan McAidoo sealed a deserved victory and earned us a quarter-final trip to Aston Villa.
And for Wilkinson it was a triumph that again highlighted the drive, spirit and togetherness of his team.
“I’m really pleased. I thought the attitude of the team and the way we started the second-half was really, really good,” Wilkinson said.
“We played with the right intensity. We played in the final third. We made lots of passes, lots of connections
“Although we didn’t score straight away, we had some really positive moments and stayed patient.
“And it was really pleasing to see the nature of the goals with our really good connections which we have been working on
“And in terms of the attitude to just kind of keep going and to chase the game in the right way.
“Obviously, we knew that the consequence of losing the game is quite significant.
“So, though we suffered a blow before half-time, to go 1-0 down, we had to pick the lads up a little bit at half-time, and just remind them that for 40 minutes, I think we had nine shots and they’d had zero.
“In those moments it’s a case of retaining our composure really and not getting involved in the emotion of the game and sticking to our processes.
“And once we did that in the second-half, I thought we were really good.”
City’s reward is a play-off quarter-final away at Aston Villa on a date yet to be confirmed.
Wilkinson’s young charges are no strangers to Villa, having secured a superb 4-0 league phase win in the West Midlands back in March.
However, the lead coach is braced for a test of a completely different magnitude this time out.
“It will be a totally different game,” Wilkinson warned.
“I thought we were outstanding that night, and it was one of our best performances of the season.
“But we know how good Villa are because obviously at the end of last season we played them in the Under-18s competition, it’s a very similar team for both sides
“So, we know the qualities they’ve got and I’m sure next week it’ll be a very different game to what we found a few weeks back but it’s one we can look forward to now.”
