It has been a fantastic first half of the season for the Aberdeen U18s.

Barry Robson’s side are still unbeaten in the CAS Elite Under 18s League having won nine games and drawn one, scoring an impressive 29 goals along the way.

And they have safely navigated their way through to the Quarter Finals of the SFA Youth Cup. The young Dons have been drawn at home to St Johnstone in the last eight whilst Kilmarnock will play Bonnyrigg Rose Athletic, it is Rangers v Partick Thistle and Heart of Midlothian v Greenock Morton. Ties are scheduled to be played on Friday, 24 January 2020.

To prepare for the league and cup in part two of the season, the U18 players will leave on Monday next week for an Erasmus+ funded trip to Portugal.
Erasmus+ is the EU’s programme to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe.

RedTV spoke to Barry Robson recently about the two-week training camp coming up in Colina Verde and how his highly promising group of youngsters are developing.

To watch the interview in full please click here.

Portugal

“At the start of the season with the under 18’s, we had the whole of the summer to work with them, working on patterns of play, getting them set as a team, all of the rest of it, so we could go and have an assault on the season.

“You can see that it has worked for us right through until Christmas.

“What we need now is a bit of a reboot again. What Erasmus does is we get 12 days of working every day, putting back in our philosophy of things that we want to do and what we want to achieve.

“It gives us a good chance for an assault on the second half of the season.

“The facilities here at Cormack Park are amazing but we are still in the middle of winter. Sometimes when you are here, and you are trying to put on a coaching session they can’t hear you because of the wind and the rain.

“That is a challenge and it is part and parcel of coaching in Scotland.

“The 12 days that we will get over there will be fantastic. Everything is funded over there.

“It will probably be between 10 – 15 degrees. It gives the boys a real chance to bed in what we want to do and what we want to achieve as well as working on their fitness. We have already started to plan with the sports scientists to get in two to three sessions a day which will be important.

“We went to The Netherlands for three days at the start of the season which was a brilliant experience for them. We played against teams who were a bit older, a bit stronger but it set us up in good stead for the season.

“I saw how they behaved over there, and they were excellent. They all want to do well.

“We have been quite firm on them this year and when we go over there it will be the same. They need to learn that when you go over to these situations that it is like a training camp.

“If you watch the first team players they know when to rest, they know when to go to their beds, what time they need to go to their rooms at night so they are ready for the next day.

“The rest is just as important as what they do on the field. The training programme will be on the same wave as to what the first team do.

“They will get a real insight into how the manager works at this football club and how we structure everything. So hopefully when they do get a chance to train or go on a trip with the first team, they will know what is expected of them and how to rest and how to train.

Cormack Park

“Out here at Cormack Park they don’t spend the first hour of the day sorting out the training equipment for the minibus which is a good thing. Obviously, that was still good for their mentality, to know that life isn’t always easy.

“Training wise we missed out a wee bit by not having our own facilities. They still have their jobs that they have to do out here.

“It is much better out here at Cormack Park. In the past we were getting in the minibuses, sorting out the first team training equipment and then having to go and train ourselves straight after that.

“At Cormack Park you can sit back for another 40 minutes and get things organised. We can go out on the training pitch, come back in and get all the first team stuff done and then we can go back out in the afternoon which is a lot easier because the training pitch is here.

“That is fantastic. The amount of double sessions that we have done now has been better because sometimes in the winter months you were trying to go out to Balgownie at 3pm and it was getting dark.

“The other day we were training at quarter to three and we can put the lights on which meant we were able to get another hour session in.

Progression

“I was training the U18’s before this season but I wasn’t there on matchdays as I had first team duties, which was preparing videos and supporting Derek and Tony. So, I was really busy with that side of things.

“The manager came to me at the start of the season and said that he wanted me to take the U18’s and that he needed players into the first team and that he wanted me to put in the values that the club expects.

“That is what I have tried to do.

“It has been a good group but as I said it comes in cycles. Last year we took in a lot of young ones and because of that we took a few hits in some games that we lost.

“What you see now is that progression six months on and they have gone on a winning run.

“Once you push this group on again you dip back down into the next group coming through.

“You always get a few who are good players and you try and instil in them the values that are expected of them from the first team manager at this football club.

“We have tried to do that, and they have done okay.

“When the manager came in he raised the standards higher at the club so it was maybe harder for a younger player to break into the first team.

“I think it is a harder team to get into now because of the expectation that there is at the football club because of the quality of the player that the manager has taken in.

Standards

“The manager is very big on youth. He gets excited when you start talking about it and he comes bouncing into the office asking who we have got.

“It is great for me and the young boys as well. Last week we were playing a game and you turn around and the manager is standing with a hat and a hood on and no one knows that he is there!

“He was standing next to the dugout, it is howling down with rain and he is standing there giving me a few tips. Just because he loves it, he loves watching the youth team.

“I don’t think that there are many managers who would be standing there on a wet freezing Friday night watching the young boys and being really excited by it.

“He is very much in that mould. He enjoys seeing the youth team about as well.

“It is my job to take them in and to try and make them better and to try and get them ready for the first team.

“There is a real standard at Aberdeen now, so they have to be top notch to get in.

“I don’t want to single any of them out.

“I say to them that you don’t play for Aberdeen, you train with Aberdeen until you have settled yourself in the first team and have played 30-50 games and you have cemented yourself as a first team player.

“That is when you can call yourself an Aberdeen player.

“It is very much just training with Aberdeen and trying to become an Aberdeen player which is what I remind them of all the time.

“There are things that they might see a first team player do and I tell them that you need to achieve that, you need to have that desire to get to there.

“If you look at what the manager has done here, the players that he has promoted through, you will get a chance, but you have to be ready.

“I think everybody thinks that if you go into the first team and you score a great goal, everybody thinks that you have made it but that is not the case.

“You need to be trusted in the first team, you need to be able to win your tackles, you need to be able to track runners, you need the basics of the game first and then once you have that then the manager can trust you to go and express yourself.

“I think sometimes the young players get it the wrong way around, they think that they need to go in and be this great player. Which is true, but they need the basics of the game first.

“Top players will come up against a young player and just run off them all day. People don’t see that, but we are watching that all of the time, you will end up losing goals at the other end.

“There are principles that need to be put into them. They need to learn that first and foremost. Once they have done that, they can let their quality speak after that.

“It is my job to instil that.

“If they go up to the first team and they start training and they start dropping runners and not doing the basics right, it is me that gets it in the neck!

“The manager gets really excited about the youth team. As I say I don’t want to single anyone out, but we have got a few good ones that are going to have an opportunity to play for Aberdeen at some point if they keep progressing the way that they are.”

Results so Far:

Club Academy Scotland Elite League

13/12/2019 | Aberdeen 5 – 1 Inverness Caledonian Thistle

29/11/2019 | St. Johnstone 1 – 2 Aberdeen

19/11/2019 | Aberdeen 2 – 2 Ross County

01/11/2019 | Aberdeen 4 – 1 Ayr United

18/10/2019 | Hamilton Academical 0 – 1 Aberdeen

04/10/2019 | Aberdeen 3 – 0 Motherwell

20/09/2019 | Aberdeen 3 – 1 Heart of Midlothian

13/09/2019 | Kilmarnock 0 – 2 Aberdeen

30/08/2019 | Aberdeen 3 – 2 Celtic

23/08/2019 | Aberdeen 4 – 0 Hibernian

SFA Youth Cup

06/12/2019 | 3rd Round | Aberdeen 4 – 2 Montrose

08/11/2019 | 2nd Round | Aberdeen 11 – 0 Clachnacuddin

Erasmus Aims

• Aim 1: To offer our players a positive experience of European travel, match experience, training and culture with a view to increasing and developing adaptability to different surroundings and circumstances.
• Aim 2: To have high quality and uninterrupted preparation to prepare for the second half of the football season developing the players technical, tactical, mental, emotional and social skills.
• Aim 3: To allow the players and staff to compete against foreign opposition so they are challenged against different styles of play in their respective roles as players and staff.
• Aim 4: To allow the players and staff to learn in depth knowledge of other European countries and the cultures associated with them.

Previous Benefits to the Club and the Players

• Opportunity to play matches versus Continental teams and undertake coaching sessions in a favourable climate for football offered increased learning opportunities.
• A purpose-built training facility which offers training pitches, match pitches and indoor gym and pool facilities on-site, thus allowing coaching, strength and conditioning and pool recovery sessions.
• Provided a platform on which team relationships were built.
• Opportunity to deliver previous training programmes abroad allowed our coaching and playing staff to improve their understanding of different styles of playing and coaching. The club have been successful in sourcing quality opposition for matches in previous Erasmus funded development camps. These past experiences aided the development of our young players who continue to aspire to compete at the highest level in football and on an international stage.
• Previous Erasmus funded outings to Antequera (January 2010) and Vilamoura (July 2011), Austria (2015), Lisbon (2016) and Spain (2018) were extensive and offered our young players excellent opportunities.

Youth Academy Graduates – Erasmus Programme Participants

Erasmus ‘graduates’ who have featured in the First Team currently include: Fraser Fyvie, Peter Pawlett, Michael Paton, Clark Robertson, Nicky Low, Mitchel Megginson, Jack Grimmer, Dominic Gibson, Dean Jarvis, Ryan Jack, Chris Maguire, Ryan Fraser (pictured), Cammy Smith, Declan McManus, Hallur Hansson, Jamie Masson, Craig Storie, Craig Murray, Joe Shaughnessy, Scott Wright, Scott McKenna, Connor McLennan, Dean Campbell, Daniel Harvie, Frank Ross, Ethan Ross and Connor Barron.