AFC Bournemouth U18s won the EFL Youth Alliance South-West Title on Tuesday in a classy and dominant performance beating Swindon U18s 3-1 at Canford Arena.
The Cherries took control of the match right from the start, but the disciplined shape kept by Swindon meant that they had nowhere to go leaving them to pass sideways trying to break them down.
This started to take effect as after 8 minutes the first opportunity came as a through ball found Daniel Adu-Adjei in on goal but he dragged his chance wide.
15 minutes in and the opportunities started to come for Bournemouth, although Swindon were staying strong. The first goal finally came after 17 minutes, a finish into the bottom corner from Baylin Johnson making it 1-0 for Bournemouth.
The game seemed to die down a bit after the goal, Bournemouth were keeping possession well as they tried to tire out the opposition.
Despite this the Swindon 5 went on a mazing run and won a free kick in dangerous territory, the free kick failed to threaten going over the bar.
The game started to swing after this as Swindon started to push up but the best, they could do was to win a corner.
Moments later Bournemouth had the ball back up the pitch and Toure Williams dribbled past 3 Swindon players before taking it around the keeper to score a beautiful goal for the Cherries making it 2-0 before the break.
The second half started at a good pace, Swindon started to press in hopes of pulling one back, but they couldn’t keep up with the Bournemouth side. 55 minutes in Swindon had a great opportunity to pull one back but a close-range effort was blazed over the top.
On the hour mark Bournemouth had their third as Kian Tydeman flicked it over the Swindon defender before he calmly finished it into the bottom right.
The Cherries could have had four, substitute Johnny Stuttle forced a fantastic save from the Swindon keeper in the closing moments of the game which would of put it to bed once and for all.
Soon after Swindon had a consolation goal, All of a sudden we were in for an interesting final few minutes.
Bournemouth stayed professional and held on to win the EFL Youth Alliance South-West division, the cherries knew they would have to turn up on the big occasion and they did just that, brilliantly coming out of the blocks flying and getting the all-important first goal and take control of the game.
Speaking to midfielder Ben Winterburn about winning the League, he said "it's a great feeling, there was a lot of ups and downs, there were some moments where we thought we couldn’t do it when we were losing in games, but overall this is down to the effort we put in behind the scenes and on the pitch."