Swansea City Under-23s Premier League Cup

Coach Gary Richards believes Swansea City Under-23s will be up for the cup as they take a break from league action to play in a series of competitions over the next fortnight.

The development squad today face Newcastle for a second time in five days in the Premier League Cup before games against Newport County and Feyenoord in the Checkatrade Trophy and PL International Cup respectively.

The young Swans are likely to make changes from the side that narrowly lost 3-2 to Newcastle in the league on Monday, and Richards believes the side have a good chance to recover from Monday's loss and progress in the competition.

"Our result in the league on Monday did not go the want we wanted, but we have an opportunity to put that right today," said Richards.

"We've made a good start to our league programme and are still top of PL2, but it is good we have an opportunity to refocus with this series of cup games for a few weeks.

"The new group stage format of the Premier League Cup gives us more games, meaning more opportunity to develop the players we have in the squad.

"We have options to make changes to the team with the squad we have, so some of our younger players could have the opportunity to show what they can do.

"We've been handed a real mixture of teams with matches also against Bristol City and Southampton - each will offer something different and all will be a good test." 

The restructured competition will see 32 clubs split into eight groups of four teams. Each team in the group will play each other twice - home and away. 

The top two teams from each group will advance to the knockout stage of the competition in March 2017.

Swansea have been drawn in Group A against Newcastle, Bristol City and Southampton.

SWANS U23s SQUAD (from): Gregor Zabret, Ross Treacy, Aaron Lewis, Keston Davies, Tyler Reid, Tom Plezier, Joe Rodon, Tom Holland, Jack Evans, Tom Dyson, Ryan Blair, George Byers, Botti Biabi, Alex Bray, Owain Jones, Alex Samuel, Jordan Garrick, Daniel James.