Peterborough United Women U23s will host Wolves Women Reserves on Sunday afternoon (3pm) at the idverde Training Ground in their first fixture of 2024 in the FA Women’s National League Reserve Midlands Division.
Posh Women U23s enter the league game in second place having won their final game of 2023 away at Lincoln City Women Development 6-1, courtesy of a hat-trick from Frankie Pim and strikes from Ella-Mai Bale and midfielders Alicia Podd and Maddison Moore.
Opponents Wolves Women Reserves have remained unbeaten since their loss at Derby County Women on 24th September, having accumulated 12 points from a possible 12 in that time; including a 9-0 win over Notts County in November. They find themselves third in the table, three points off Posh with two games in hand.
The 2023/34 campaign kicked-off with this reverse fixture back in September with Posh salvaging a point having come from behind 2-0 to draw with Wolves following a late brace from Frankie Pim.
Team News
The U23s enter the fixture with a large squad as the Christmas break allowed players time to recover from injuries. Alice Akinyemi (unavailable), Bronte Cooper (injured) and Frankie Pim (first-team) are the only absentees for this fixture. Michael Allesbrook has admitted that several players from the academy have begun training with the U23s and will add depth to his squad once they are eligible to play.
Ella-Mai Bale will be hoping to carry on her goal-scoring threat into the new year as she netted her tenth goal in just her tenth appearance in the final game of 2023 against The Imps in December.
Wolves Women Reserves have a tendency to share their goals across the squad this season. Alexandra Khayat is currently their top scorer having netted eight goals across 9 appearances this season. She is closely followed by Lyndsey Ross-Baker on six goals and Tayte Shakespeare with five goals.
From The Gaffer
U23s Manager, Michael Allsebrook says, “It’s been nice to have a break having played relentlessly over the last few months. We’re in a good shape for Sunday. We saw all the way back in September how good a side Wolves are. They gave us a really hard test in our opening game of the season, and we probably nicked a point off them having been resilient throughout the game. We look back at that day and we were a team with ‘square pegs in round holes’ – it was our first competitive fixture as a new team under new management.”
“We’ve come a long way since then, as have Wolves, and we both deserve the positions in the table that we are in. It’ll be interesting to see how both sides have developed and progressed since then. We back ourselves on any day to win a game.”
By Lauren Shiels
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Photo credit: Darren Wiles Photography