Mehmet Ali saw his under-21s begin pre-season with a 4-2 win away to Boreham Wood at Mangata Pay UK Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
With 45 minutes played by 22 different young Gunners across the match, there were plenty of takeaways for Mehmet and his coaching staff.
“We play Boreham Wood every pre-season and we always have a really good fixture against them,” he said after the game. “We normally don’t come out with the positive result! Today we did get that. I thought our boys did really well, both teams from the first half to the second half.
“There were some really good individual performances and some nice team play as well, so a good start to pre-season.”
Salah-Eddine Oulad M’Hand, back from last season’s loan at FC Den Bosch, was the standout performer in the first half, getting a goal and an assist in the first ten minutes before netting a brace on the brink of half-time courtesy of a pass from his brother Ismail.
“Salah has matured really nicely,” Mehmet added. “He’s had different loan experiences. He’s been unfortunate with injuries, but this season he’s been a bit of a leader in the group. He’s normally on the winning team when we’re doing games in attack v defence practices and he showed that today, so I was really pleased for him to get an assist and two goals.
“That’s actually the first time that the two brothers have played together in the same team at Arsenal! It was nice for them, as well as all of the lads who have bonded really well this year with some older ones and younger ones coming through. They’re working well to push on.”
Enfield Town are the next opposition as we travel to Queen Elizabeth II Stadium on Tuesday night (7.45pm KO), and Mehmet is now looking for his youngsters to be ready to impress Mikel Arteta and the first-team coaching staff should they be called upon for the upcoming USA tour.
“We just want them to be ready,” he said. “This year we’ve got the Euros, which always has an impact on our pre-season and our first team’s pre-season, but we’ve had two weeks in and we’re just trying to get the lads as ready as possible before hopefully some of them get the opportunity next week to be with the first team, get some minutes in games that they will play and the opportunity to potentially travel to America.”
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