The young Ipswich Town players are ‘buzzing’ after their impressive FA Youth Cup victory over Liverpool.
The Blues were good value for their victory against their illustrious visitors, with Rio Morgan netting twice in the first-half on a night when Woody Williamson saved a Terence Miles penalty in front of a crowd of more than 2,600.
It could have been more, too, with Town hitting the bar twice before progress was ultimately sealed, setting up a quarter-final clash with West Ham at Portman Road.
“The boys put in a very good performance and it was great to come out with a win and two goals,” Morgan said.
“The boys are buzzing. The fans were amazing and the boys thrived off of that. It was a great atmosphere and we are so happy to win.
“We believe we can do it. We believe we can go all the way and that team spirit we have really helps us because we are all so close.
“We dig deep and work hard for each other, so to do it with a great bunch of boys is a really good feeling.”
Discussing his goals, Morgan said: “The first one was early. The ball fell to me and thankfully I had a strike and it found its way in. But we didn’t want to get ahead of ourselves because Liverpool are a very good opposition, so we just kept going.
“Luckily, before the break, I found myself one-on-one with my man, I beat him and the shot went into the bottom corner.”
Boss Sam Darlow said: “We’re very, very pleased with the team’s performance.
“We started on the front foot, which we wanted to do, and overall this is what we’ve been working as a group for an awful long time for.
“The players went out there and showed the values and the principles that the football club has and hopefully everyone who has come this evening will have seen some stars of the future.
“The supporters were brilliant. The players haven’t had many opportunities to play in front of fans in the stadium because of Covid, so to have more than 2,000 fans here was amazing.
“Hopefully we’ll see them again in the next round.”
Darlow also had some words of praise for goalkeeper Williamson, who produced penalty heroics for the second game in succession in this competition, have come up with a good save in the shootout victory over Nottingham Forest.
"Credit to Woody," Darlow said. "He works exceptionally hard every day, he practices saving penalties and just generally is a student of the game and he tries to do the best thing that he possibly can.
“And tonight he’s either guessed the right way or seen which way the lad was going and pulled off a very good save.”
Ipswich Town: Williamson; Haddoch (Steele, 87), H Barbrook, Cousens, Logan; F Barbrook, Manly (Taylor, 78); Morgan, Foyo, Valentine; Buabo (Corrigan, 71)
Subs: Cullum, O'Neill, Davis, Nwansa-Dwamena
Liverpool: Hewitson, Davidson, Scanlon, Miles, Hayes-Green, Laffey, Kone-Doherty, Pilling, Clark, Gyimah (Onanuga, 46 (Gift, 57), Danns
Subs: Pennington, Trueman, Pinnington, Morrison, Pitt
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