Colchester United's Youth Team have beaten Swindon Town in Round Two of the FA Youth Cup.
A 2-0 victory at the County Ground on Thursday night gives Liam Bailey's squad a home tie in Round Three against Premier League giants Arsenal.
They left it late, scoring twice in injury time through Kaan Bennett and Ryan Lowe.
A date hasn't been set for the game against the Gunners here at the JobServe Community Stadium, but the Third Round ties are due to be played on or before December 11th.
The game at Swindon started off with the first half fairly even with both teams trying to get a foot hold in the game but neither team really created many goal scoring chances.
The U’s passed the ball well at times from the defensive third into midfield, but never really got control in the final third.
Any potentially positive patterns of play ended with either the U’s not getting a cross in or not quite having the quality from the crossing that did go in.
On occasions, the U’s also let Swindon play through us in midfield too easily, without conceding many chances, so overall 0-0 at half time was a fair score line.
During the half-time break, Bailey and his staff tweaked things, wanting to press Swindon from playing out from their goal kicks and to be more patient with the ball and start to show our strengths as a team and individuals more.
This showed in the second half, and the U’s had more success in wide areas with Freddie Price and Kai Redgrave causing problems down either side of the pitch.
Sean Brown up front started to stretch the game more and got a good chance with a run in behind, but after beating two men, he fired his shot at the goalkeeper.
As the game went on, the U’s played out well from the back with Frankie Terry and Brad Chakawa but a mention must also go to the defensive work of those two, Endurance Johnson in goal and Ellis Sullivan who defended well throughout the second half.
The midfield of Ryan Lowe and Kacy Parish started to have more of an effect and it was those two that linked up for a short corner where Kacy’s cross was misjudged by the goalkeeper and as it landed on the bar.
The rebound gave the ever dangerous Kaan Bennett the opportunity to head home from a yard out, with ninety one minutes on the clock.
The U’s deserved what looked like the winner through their hard work and quality, but they added a second to make sure of progression into the next round three minutes later.
Darnell Asare-Williams made a run in behind from Kaan’s flick on and was fouled as he went to take his shot. Ryan Lowe stepped up and sent the keeper the wrong way with his left footed penalty.
The final whistle with the U’s heading through to the Third Round and a visit to north Essex for Arsenal’s youngsters.