Adam Birchall sat down with members of the media at Sobha Realty Training Centre this week to look ahead to Friday night’s FA Youth Cup quarter-final against Manchester United.
Limited tickets are available or, if you’re not attending the match, you can stream it live on Arsenal.com or the official app from 6.55pm.
For our under-18s head coach, the competition represents an exciting opportunity to see our young Gunners in front of a crowd of 10,000 at Emirates Stadium.
“It’s so exciting,” he said. “We’re all very inspired and we know we want to put on a good show. This week has been a different type of week for the young boys and we’ve really framed it as ‘enjoy the week. Be present, try to take it all in’. They’ll get stuff that they don’t usually get, get a first-team experience on the day, so really excited.
“This is a very young group compared to recent years. I think we’re the youngest in the competition. We’ve got 15, 16 year olds in the squad, so there is the balance of too much and overstimulating them and putting them in a good position to go and show everyone what they’ve got.
“All the players are on different journeys and we’ve got really talented players throughout the system and it just creates other opportunities for our talented players to step up and show what they’ve got. That’s one of the benefits of players getting the trust of Mikel, it gives opportunities to younger lads underneath to develop.”
One of those opportunities came in the fifth round away to Fulham, where goals from Andre Harriman-Annous and Max Dowman were enough to earn us a 2-1 win, having beaten Queens Park Rangers on penalties and Hertford Town in previous rounds.
“We spoke about it in the last game against Fulham, that it was an opportunity to go and play at Emirates Stadium if we won the game,” Birchall said. “It’s a different development tool. We want to be relentless and win every game and that’s important at these ages that we develop that mindset, but it’s just a different environment for us to go and test them in in front of 10,000 people, separate from what they usually get on matchday.
“One thing is the talent, so they’ve got the talent and they can do it, so that’s why we ask them to be involved in this, because it’s right for their development at this stage.”
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