Mark Lester took over the Stourbridge Under-21s team from Dean Peer and Wayne Beddoe at the end of last season as they stepped up to the Under-23s, whilst also being the Head of Junior Development at the club.
When asked his thoughts on his side’s league performance so far, he said, “The word I’d use is overachieved. The Under-21’s are the runt of the litter in our pathway, given that I have to take Under-23’s that come down, Youth Team players that come up, and first teamers that need minutes.
“I never get to pick the same team so, I have irregular teams every week. So, getting to the semi-final of a cup competition and sitting at 5th in the table, I would say is very good for the group that I’ve got.”
Lester was brutally honest with his team’s league positioning as he revealed that “I didn’t expect to be fifth in the league. We were top of the league for quite a while, but some of the teams that we came against were proper 21’s teams, which are the lads that are too old to play Youth Team football.
“Some of the teams we’ve come against have been together for three or four years. We use our Under-21s as a development pathway, with the idea being that we push our 18s up to play and create players to go through to our 23s and hopefully our first team.”
The positives outweigh the negatives when Lester said “I think the amount of games that we have won and competed in is a positive in itself. We have an extremely young group; I probably pick on average between five and seven 16-year-olds in the team.
“I have been pleasantly surprised with what we consider the 18’s first years, so these are players that are playing their first year of youth team floodlit football. They have really impressed me with how they’ve handled 21s football; they’ve not looked physically out of place.
“I would probably say their decision-making needs improving. We get into good positions on the pitch and then for me, make the wrong decision, but that will come with age and more experience.”
Reaching the Semi-Finals of the Saturday Amateur Cup was a big achievement for the side this year because it was actually a men’s cup competition, it wasn’t just restricted to Under-21s.
“Two of the teams we came up across were proper men’s teams, which played on my mind a little bit because being such a young group, it’s a test for them to go against 21-year-olds let alone men in this competition.
FC Stratford A especially in the quarter finals, they were fully grown men with some being late 20’s and early 30’s. It played on my mind in terms of physicality, but the lads were super.”
After the quarterfinals, the feedback boosted the players as Lester told us “The Stratford manager said to me afterwards of how good a team we were considering our age, which is always nice to hear. I think it was a massive achievement for the squad, and it gave the boys a lot of positivity, which was great.”
The Under-21’s were scheduled to have a double-header against Sutton United. Firstly in the league and then the semi-final of the Cup. Lester was candid with the league result as he said “Listen, in the league we lost 4-0, which for me wasn’t a fair reflection on the game.
“It goes back to me saying about decision making in the final third, how we didn’t score in that game I don’t know. You probably could’ve left that game 4-4 and nobody would’ve argued.”
Lester made a slight tweak in the shape and the way that he set up for the cup game and said “Even though we unfortunately lost 2-0, in the second half we were by far the better team, and we absolutely put them to the sword and really put a lot of pressure on them.
𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐂𝐮𝐩 𝐫𝐮𝐧 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐝 ❌
— Stourbridge FC Pathway (@StourPathway) February 14, 2026
An unfortunate result but great team play sees our Saturday Amateur Cup journey come to an end.
Well played lads 🔴⚪️#StourbridgeFC | #Glassboys pic.twitter.com/NyTgOZS0Lu
“If we’d have made better decisions, we wouldn’t have lost that game. We had golden opportunities; it was just occasions we tried to overplay or tried to do too much on the ball when sometimes the simple thing to shoot was the right decision.”
The 21’s gaffer compared the two games and how they differed with each other:
“You play a team that beat you 4-0 the week before and then go to their place and be the better side over the full 90 minutes, still to lose the game 2-0 is a tough pill for me to swallow but I’m so proud of the boys as for 80% of that game we were the better side.”
Lester’s standout performance during their cup campaign fell at the quarterfinals “The quarter-final performance against FC Stratford A stood out for me because we moved the ball superbly and wore them down.
The three goals from yesterday that pushed our U21's into the Semi-finals of the Saturday Amateur Cup! 💥
— Stourbridge FC Pathway (@StourPathway) January 25, 2026
1️⃣ Josh Ward
2️⃣ Harrison Tibbetts
3️⃣ David Ojeli#StourbridgeFC | #Glassboys pic.twitter.com/31dKkxMlLs
“It was 0-0 at half time and so to win the game 3-1 shows that in the second half we tired them out chasing the ball and they just couldn’t keep up. So that was a great performance especially having six 16-year-olds in the starting lineup that day.”
Finally on the remainder of the season, Lester was direct in saying that “This season is a bit of a choppy one for us. We will carry on with the league games up until we finish and I think we will finish top six which will be fantastic.
“I’d have pulled someone’s arm off at the start of the season if they’d have said we would do this well because it was a rebuild season this year as we’re a completely new team. We do have the League Cup still to play which will start in the next couple of weeks so, another positive run in that will do the lads the world of good and give us something to build on next year.”
