After spending over three months on the sidelines through injury, Xavier Amaechi made his return to action on Monday night in a 2-2 draw with Brighton & Hove Albion.
The 18-year-old opened the scoring with a thumping left-footed effort into the far corner, before assisting Gedion Zelalem’s 86th-minute equaliser - and now he’s desperate to kick on under Freddie Ljungberg’s guidance.
We spoke to Amaechi after the game and this is what he said:
on the performance…
I think it was an alright team performance, but at the end of the day we didn’t win the game so we’ll look back at it and see where we can improve. In the first half we dominated the game and in the second half we dropped off a little bit, but overall I think it was an alright performance.
on dominating the first half…
I think we really used the wings and got in plenty of one on one situations and I think we used that quite well. Bukayo came in and he slid me through, so I think we played to our strengths.
on his opening goal…
It’s come to my left foot and I’ve swung across it and it’s gone right into the post and in, so it’s a good feeling to score after being out for a while. Me and Tyreece had our celebration planned before!
on being out through injury…
It was really hard mentally being out for so long. Some of my teammates have been getting first-team chances, but I’ve just had to stay strong mentally and think that my time will come if I keep working hard and keep putting the work in on the training ground. Hopefully my time will come soon.
on seeing his teammates play first-team football…
It shows that you’re close if you keep working hard and impressing when you get the chance. The chance is always there, so it’s about taking your opportunity when it comes.
on assisting the equaliser…
I think we just had to keep our heads up. We couldn’t get too down that we were losing, but I think when we got into counter-attacking opportunities we did really well. I got myself one on one with my defender and beat him and Gedion did well to finish it at the end, so that was good and we showed good character to stay in the game.
on Manchester City and the Youth Cup coming up…
There’s a lot of big games to come, so we’ve just got to stay focused and go back to the training pitch and see where we can improve.
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