Adam Birchall was delighted with our Under-18s performance in their 3 - 1 win over West Ham United on Saturday afternoon at Sobha Realty Training Centre.
Despite going a goal down to an Elisha Sowunmi penalty, our Gunners showed the determination required to turn the game on its head.
Max Dowman drew us level just after the half-hour mark, before Daniel Oyetunde and Ceadach O’Neill produced fantastic finishes to secure the points.
That wasn’t the end of the action however, as the Hammers were awarded a second penalty in stoppage time, only to be denied by a fantastic double save from Khari Ranson.
On his assessment of the game…
“I’m really pleased with how the lads approached the game, their mentality towards it being a London derby but that’s something I’ve seen improve week-in week-out.
“I was really pleased with the togetherness of the group today, if I shut my eyes during the game I could hear them communicating, I thought we were louder in that way and they solved problems.
“That was the big challenge for them today, we had our game plan, a bit like QPR, but all the time you need to solve the problems that the games throw up and I thought they did that today collectively, attacked with 11 and defended with 11.”
On the technical quality on display…
“Much better (than against QPR), I think we played with better collective understanding, that helped so the timings were better, there was more care in the forward passes, in the direction of passes because we were under pressure on the right side.
“Generally it was just a lot cleaner, I think it helped with West Ham not pressing as aggressively in the first phase of build-up as QPR did last week but I was really pleased in general with the technical quality today.”
On looking ahead to our upcoming games…
“The result is a big thing but the biggest thing I’m taking home today is the lads and how they’re self-regulating and solving things in the game. They’re really starting to mature and understand what games need.
“So that’s the biggest thing and it’ll be more of the same back on the training pitch, developing, trying to get better, cleaner technically, raise our standards and try to grow again each week.”
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