City's Under-18s team face an early trip to Manchester United next season.The youngsters travel to United's training ground on August 30, a week after opening their Premier Academy League campaign at home to Nottingham Forest.

City's Under-18s team face an early trip to Manchester United next season.

The youngsters travel to United's training ground on August 30, a week after opening their Premier Academy League campaign at home to Nottingham Forest.

“Forest's Academy is very highly regarded and is certainly a fixture where both teams will look to play attractive and attacking football,” said City's Academy manager, Ricky Marin.

“This is followed by a game at Manchester United. This game obviously has a high profile for us and I know the lads will be very much looking forward to their first away trip to the current European champions' training ground when they receive the full fixture list next week.”

Martin said his charges need to be stretched to their full potential in the quest to produce top quality talent.

“Glancing at the fixtures from the start of the season you realise what a competitive standard academy football is and this will certainly enable the players in our academy to test themselves against some of the best young players in this country,” he said.

“The academy fixture programme is very different to senior football. Academy football is split into four regional groups. Our group consists of the likes of Arsenal, Charlton, Chelsea and Crystal Palace, whom we play home and away and this provides us with 18 group fixtures.

“In addition to this we play 10 games against teams from the other three groups, which are picked at random. This system has thrown up two interesting fixtures against two teams we have not faced for a very long time in the shape of Manchester United and Nottingham Forest.”

The under-18s, like their senior counterparts, have pre-season matches to prepare themselves for the season ahead, with a Japanese team, among the opposition who will be coming to the Coney training centre.

Pre-season: Monday, July 14 Leyton Orient (2pm); Wednesday, July 23 Japanese representative side (2pm); Friday August 1 Southend United (2pm); Saturday, August 16 Norfolk County U18s (11am).