Man City ride the storm to make Premier League history with academy treble-double

Anything the Manchester City senior team can do, the academy follows. Sometimes, the academy leads.

For the third year running, the under-18s and under-23s are both national champions, with the youth team beating West Ham on Wednesday night at the Etihad to complete an unprecedented treble-double.

After winning the Northern Division of the under-18 Premier League for the fourth year in a row last month, Ben Wilkinson's youngsters confirmed their status as the best youngsters in the country with a hard-fought extra-time victory over a fine West Ham outfit. The title, and the history that comes with it, will stay with these youngsters forever - while the manner of their latest victory will please the coaches and decision-makers at City who are now seeing a regular return for years-worth of planning and coaching.

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U18 captain Nico O'Reilly said that the job wasn't finished unless City won the national final for a third successive season, despite four northern titles in a row (there was no national champion in 2020). Head coach Wilkinson naturally looked at the bigger picture before the game, declaring that a third academy clean-sweep would reflect far more than the talented young players on the pitch.

"The people sitting down at the top looking down at the success over the last three to four years and the success had by the teams can be really proud of the structure they put in place 10-12 years ago," Wilkinson told MEN Sport. "The kids that are winning things now are boys who started in this programme when they were five or six years old and have been all the way through."

City knew the threat West Ham would pose,