The first team building at Manchester City's training facility has not been the happiest of places this season.
With a rotating cast of walking wounded and Pep Guardiola and the players that are available having to lift themselves through one of the worst periods of results in most of their professional careers, it has been a season of unwanted firsts. Metres away where the academy teams reside, things couldn't be better.
Oliver Reiss's Under-18s sit top of their league, having inflicted the first defeat of the season on reigning champions United recently by thumping them 4-0 at Carrington as part of a 14-game winning run. Ben Wilkinson's Under-21s are also top, two points clear of Fulham with 13 victories from their 16 league games so far.
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Then there are the knockout competitions; in early March the Under-19s will aim to become the first City side to reach the quarter-finals of the UEFA Youth League for six years, and before then there is the last eight in the FA Youth Cup. The young Blues head to West Brom on Thursday looking to continue their defence of the most prestigious youth competition in England, and will travel to the Midlands in buoyant moods.
"Trophies are so important," goalkeeper Max Hudson tells the Manchester Evening News, "because although development is the most important thing and we all want to be in that position where we're playing first team football - whether it is here or somewhere else, we all want to become professional players - it would be a disappointment to end the season without any silverware to show for it.
"We've done enough on the pitch and as a group together so it feels right for us to win some silverware and it would be a perfect way to top it off."
Reiss is keen to feed into the pressure of knockout games, telling his players to embrace the pressure since that forms such a large part of making it at the highest level. Winger Ryan McAidoo joined from Chelsea this season and is looking to add to his tally of 12 goals and six assists from 26 appearances so far.
"I want to excite and create and score goals and get assists," he said. "Doing that on the biggest stages is what makes players greater because they are able to show it where it matters the most."
