The Under-18s fell to a narrow defeat at the league leaders on Saturday morning.

Jason Dodd freshened up his side from the midweek Youth Cup defeat to Nottingham Forest, but a slow start against the Londoners saw Saints fall behind after quarter of an hour after a cross from the left was sidefooted home past Chris Johns.

A tight contest saw the teams continued to be separated by just the one goal at the interval, but a spirited fightback in the second 45 from the visitors drew an equaliser after 60 minutes.

Omar Rowe played in Fraser COLMER (pictured) down the left hand side and the full back steadied himself before finding the far corner to level the scores.

Saints were in the ascendancy from there on in as they dominated possession and chances, but they were caught out just ten minutes from time when a cross was headed in, leaving Dodd to rue a lack of cutting edge from his side.

"We've created 20 chances to their five today so we've got to be more clinical," he said afterwards.

"It was a slow start from us and we may be showed them too much respect early on, but we got into them a bit at half time so in the second half we controlled the game, and it was a sucker punch that left us coming away from the game with nothing.

"We need to score more goals; today we didn't work their goalkeeper enough despite bossing some of the play so we've got a bit to work on at the training ground."

Saints U18s: Johns, Young, Mugabi, Turnbull, Colmer, Bowman (McQueen 75), Gape, Reed, Chambers, Ward-Baptiste (Sinclair 35), Rowe (Ariyibi 84).