Arsenal under-21s coach Max Porter offered an honest assessment following a 5-2 defeat to St Albans City in our second pre–season friendly.
On the game…
“Well, I think we didn't start the game well at all. It's always very, very difficult for a young team like we are at the moment to give away a goal like that.
“We encourage our players to play bravely, but decision-making like that is very, very difficult. And then I thought we had a real wobble. I thought we struggled in those periods, and we conceded a very poor second goal in terms of how we defended.
“Reflecting with the staff, we know that we've been very young. We were extremely proud of the effort and the performance, the way the boys dug in on Saturday against Boreham Wood.
“Tonight was a totally different challenge. With Boreham Wood, we're familiar there, we know the pitch. The key thing for us now is we've got to support these young players.
“We had an under-16 play tonight. We had first-year scholars who had just arrived in the building as full-time footballers. There are some real harsh lessons there, but they're lessons that we're going to support them with and we're going to help them learn and grow.
“Hopefully, if we do that, they'll be better for this experience, because that's the whole point of this. If we play these teams and be in these environments against men, if we don't take the lessons, then it's a total waste.”
[Read more
U21s highlights: St Albans City 5-2 Arsenal](https://www.arsenal.com/news/u21s-highlights-st-albans-city-5-2-arsenal?utm_source=arsenaldotcom&utm_medium=embedded-article&utm_campaign=news)
On Alex Marciniak and Maalik Hashi getting on the scoresheet…
“Yeah, we've got two midfielders that have scored two goals now in Maalik and Alex Marciniak. That's brilliant for them. You know, midfielders who can score goals, we want that.
“I thought in the first half we were just too passive with the ball, and we were too passive without the ball. It took us being very direct on the side to get our boys to press how we want.
“All we ever ask the boys as Arsenal players is to play and be who we are. We're a front-foot team. Our first team do that. We aim to do that. That's how we want to develop players. And with the ball, we want to be exciting.
“After those goals, maybe we lacked a little bit of belief, and we were probably passing the ball too soon, rather than committing to the next line and being more adventurous to then break the lines and progress the play.
“But again, these are the lessons we've got to take. We'll definitely be reflecting on that. And all of us are helping the players.”
On the next steps of pre-season…
“We had a great camp last year in Slovakia, and we played a very, very tough Rapid Vienna team.
“Obviously, the first team were away in La Manga and we had eight players out there who had been training with them. Hopefully, they've had a great opportunity to impress all of the first team staff, because that's why we do the job. We'll see if any of those come back to us or if they get another opportunity, hopefully in Asia.
“The under-18s have got a tour to Germany, so we'll hopefully put the players in the best groups for them to go and have a great experience. And when we're out there, we're going to be working hard to hopefully develop future players for our first team.”
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.