CHESTER were given a lesson in finishing as they crashed out of the FA Youth Cup with a 4-0 defeat to Morecambe at the Deva Stadium on Tuesday night.
Watched by first-team boss Jim Harvey, the young Blues made a flying start to the first-round proper tie and could have had been two up inside the first two minutes.
The impressive Sam Coulter – City’s scorer in Saturday’s 3-1 Youth Alliance North West Conference defeat at Burnley – set up Ben Whitcombe for a strike which rattled the woodwork before Ben Jones sliced wide after latching on to a poor goal kick.
Morecambe looked there for the taking but, totally against the run of play, they broke the deadlock in the 10th minute.
After goalkeeper Josh O’Connell was forced to take evasive action to prevent Connell Rawlinson from heading into his own goal, the visitors took advantage of hesitant defending to score from the resulting corner.
Striker Jones – one of the two Blues players on show with first-team experience, the other being Rawlinson – then wasted a golden opportunity to equalise. And with that went Chester’s chances as clinical Morecambe struck twice before the break before adding a fourth in a non-event of a second half.
Chester: O’Connell, Freeman, Whitcombe, Mills-Evans (Breen 70), Rawlinson, Walker, Maxwell (Reid 55), Rea, Jones, Coulter, Davidson (Lee 55). Subs: Mason, Blears.
