Mehmet Ali on West Brom defeat

Mehmet Ali praised the attacking threat our under-21s showed in a narrow 4-3 defeat to West Bromwich Albion.

Despite goals from Charles Sagoe Jr., Will Sweet and Khayon Edwards, our young Gunners were beaten in Solihull on Monday night.

Even with this defeat, we still finished in the top eight of the Premier League 2 table, securing a home tie in the first round of the playoffs

On the performance…

“Credit to West Brom this evening, I thought they deserved the three points really, I thought they scored two very, very good goals from distance. Errors on our behalf though, on a pitch like we played on this evening we had to be better with taking care with some of our passes.

“I thought we did that in spells and got into some really good areas, but credit to West Brom, they deserved to win.”

On the attacking threat we posed…

“I think from an attacking point of view, we’re doing really well. We’re doing well, we’re getting into good areas and then with our backline we need to keep supporting them and helping them in terms of unforced errors and giving teams chances.

“At the moment, even in the games we’ve won in the past couple of weeks, we’re still giving teams opportunities to score goals past us, which is something we need to look at and address.

“But yeah, definitely, I thought the fight we showed all the way through was great, two penalties in the game shows our creative attacking play. One we converted, one we didn’t, so from an attacking point of view some good stuff this evening, but we need to look at how we can improve defensively.”

On working on penalties ahead of the playoffs…

“It’s something we do with the lads often and to be fair to them we do really well on it, so again it’s something we need to look at as a group of staff and for the players, again, how we can help them when they get in those moments.

“Big players in big moments have got to take those opportunities.”

On the Premier League 2 playoffs…

“Some of the lads are in there now looking at their phones to see who we’re going to be playing! It’s a shame we didn’t get the win this evening because it would’ve guaranteed top eight (and a home match), so we’ll see who we play.

“Whoever it is, we’re looking forward to the fixture and like you said, it’s knockout, it’s all or nothing so we’re looking forward to it.”