Mark Bonner issues Cambridge United pre-season verdict | OneFootball

Cambridge United’s preparations for the forthcoming campaign have been going extremely well. This comes after two impressive showings against Cardiff City leaving them with a win and a draw.

Both games were played at the same time with a mixture of players appearing in either fixture, lasting 60 minutes. Sam Smith and Jensen Weir scored in the 2-0 victory while Joe Ironside netted a penalty in the 1-1 draw.

Mark Bonner told Cambridge United’s official website that he was pleased with pre-season so far, saying: “Of course it can help people improve if we’re competing and doing okay with and against better players and teams, there’s no doubting that.

“At the same time, what we’re looking for is some of the work we’ve been doing this week, and over the last three weeks now, on the pitch. I thought we showed some good flashes of that.”

The U’s played Cardiff City as part of a five-day-training camp at the Vale Camp in Glamorgan. They also have a fixture against Northampton Town coming up on the 31st July. This will be the first time a full set of fans have entered the Abbey Stadium since the start of the pandemic, last March.

Bonner also had this to say about the training camp: “The lads have worked really hard, so we’ve done some good work in the team in the last few days, some restarts and set play stuff yesterday afternoon.”

The Verdict

The most important part of pre-season is building fitness and breeding confidence. Beating sides in the division above is certainly going to do that for Mark Bonner’s men.

In a season in which they are likely to be fighting relegation after losing their top scorer in Paul Mullin, any sort of bonus shouldn’t be taken for granted.

A positive start for Cambridge in pre-season and one they will hope to take into the forthcoming campaign.

20 questions about some of Cambridge United’s biggest ever moments in their history – Can you score full marks?

1 of 20

In what year did Cambridge secure promotion to the third-tier by winning the first ever play-off final at Wembley?

1988

1989

1990

1991