Just like our men's first-team, our academy sides also made winning starts to the 2023/24 campaign by both recording home wins over West Ham United over the weekend.
Here you can see all the goals and interviews in one place as we wrap up a successful few days for our academy sides.
Arsenal U21s 3-0 West Ham United
We started our Premier League 2 campaign with three points on the board after beating West Ham at Meadow Park on Friday night.
All the goals came in the second half, with Myles Lewis-Skelly scoring from close range before Nathan Butler-Oyedeji added a second four minutes later.
The win was wrapped up in stoppage time when Amario Cozier-Duberry netted a third, and post-match Mehmet Ali was happy that their tweaks at the break paid off.
"At half-time I think we reset and came out of the blocks firing," he said. "From 45-75 minutes we were excellent and created chances and we got our reward, which was well-deserved and we got some good goals, and a clean sheet as well. I'm really pleased and proud of the boys."
Butler-Oyedeji also enjoyed playing in attack with Ethan Nwaneri and Charles Sagoe Jr, and he admitted that's all developed naturally: "It's not something that we work on, we've got the relationship between us and we're quite fluid so we change positions a lot and the combinations come through that."
Arsenal U18s 2-0 West Ham United
The following day, under-18s picked up their first points of their 2023/24 campaign after a 2-0 win over the Hammers in the Under-18 Premier League at London Colney, gaining a small manner of revenge for our FA Youth Cup final defeat against the same opponents back in April
Jack Wilshere’s side made a swift start to the season when Daniel Oyetunde beat the West Ham shot-stopper Finlay Herrick to a cross and found the back of an unguarded net after just 18 minutes.
No more than three minutes later, a well-orchestrated link-up from Bless Akolbire and Daniel Oyetunde allowed the English forward to tee up Louie Copley to hammer home from the edge of the area.
Wilshere was satisfied post-match, saying: "Result-wise it was very good and I'm happy with the clean sheet and two good goals. I think the way we defended our box today, and the big challenge for us this year was to improve on that and make it so we're always in the game, even if we don't have the best performance."
Oyetunde was also pleased with starting his season amongst the goals: "The midfield behind, and even the backline, are very creative and are great passers of the ball so for a striker that's a dream and I can get in behind and try and score goals," he said. "Any striker wants to be top goalscorer but we'll go game by game and hopefully we can finish high in the league."
Copyright 2025 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
