Sunderland U21 assistant coach John Hewitson believes that the club's academy talents will benefit from playing alongside some senior players in the U21 sides, even if it means some youngsters will see some of their minutes reduced. This came off the back of Sunderland fielding five summer signings against Derby County in the Premier League 2.
HIGH STANDARD
"As human beings, sometimes they can be quite selfish and they want to play every game, which is understandable. Our regular U21 players know that this is the case and that this is the policy and the way the club wants to go. There will be some times where they get dropped in and some of our U21 players play alongside them and they will enjoy and learn from playing with players of that standard and calibre."
RESPECT THE DEVELOPMENT PLAN
"It's another part of their development. For some of the boys have done particularly well over the last few weeks and then didn't find themselves in the squad, it's tough and you have empathy for them because they are upset that they are not playing but that's the way the club is wanting to do it so we respect that."
LANGUAGE BARRIER
"They are talented players and it's really good for us as staff because we've got French [Aouchiche], Portuguese [Hemir], Ukrainian [Rusyn] - there's a lot of Google Translate going on at half-time! It's interesting having to communicate with different nationalities, and then for the boys to get used to playing with them."
NAZARIY RUSYN
"He's different to what we have had, he's got genuine pace, he wants to do well, he wants to work extremely hard, but he is slightly physically behind the other lads because he has only trained with us for the last couple of weeks so it will take time to get him up to speed."
THE GAME
"The result was good, and we were pleased with the first half performance but in the second half it became a bit scrappy and we didn't control it as much as we like to. Derby changed their mentality a little bit and had a go at us, which is credit to them, but thankfully we got the third goal just to make it a bit more comfortable toward the end. I'd say it was in the balance in the second half, but the first half performance was much better than the second."
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