David Horseman praised the "heart and desire" of our under-19s as they came from behind to beat Bayern Munich 4-2 in the UEFA Youth League.
Goals from Max Dowman, Kyran Thompson and Ceadach O'Neill secured our first win of the League Phase, and our under-21s head coach was delighted with what he saw from our young Gunners.
“Really enjoyed that one, obviously it’s nice to win and we try to win every game but I think more importantly, to see such a young group play with that heart and desire and no end of skill at times as well.
“To be fair to Bayern it was similarly aged teams and I think both teams went at it, a really good advert for this competition and why it’s really important that in the next couple of years we start to progress, because the more of these types of games we get, the more chance we’ve got of preparing our players for the future. That’s the thing today, you look to the future and it’s pretty exciting.”
A key moment in the game saw Jack Porter save a Bayern Munich penalty right on half-time; Horseman felt that the momentum we gained from that helped us go on to secure the win.
“It’s huge, it’s probably been the story of our competition and even in the EFL (Trophy), we score and at important times we give really poor goals away to be totally honest.
“Even the penalty (today) is a random handball that’s come out of nothing. Sometimes you get opened up by good players at this level, like Max’s at the end is just brilliance, and sometimes you have to hold your hands up.
“But throughout this competition, the reason we probably won’t progress beyond the group stages, is we give too many away. But what the boys did do today, when they had to suffer, they suffered as a group, they saw periods out.
“We started well and then had 15, 20 minutes where I thought (Bayern) were on top and they were the better team and caused us problems, and then with 15 minutes to go before the end of the first half, I thought we were really starting to take control.”
“Jack made an excellent save and we tweaked a couple of bits on the press, Max Porter is really good with that, really understands how the first team try to press and we try to emulate as much of it as we can down here.
“The boys took it on and I thought we were absolutely outstanding for 90% of the second half, and thoroughly deserved the win I think in the end.”
Wednesday’s success was our first victory in this season’s UEFA Youth League, meaning we are unlikely to make the knockout stages even if we were to win our final game against Club Brugge.
Despite a disappointing European campaign overall, Horseman felt that there are valuable lessons to be learned for the rest of the season.
“There’s probably two parts; we want to progress in the tournament and this year we’ve missed some opportunities, we should’ve beaten Olympiacos, we probably should’ve beaten Atletico Madrid.
“But what those games have probably done is give us some lessons. We as a staff, as an academy, made a conscious decision today to go really young. Bar Louie (Copley), (Harrison) Dudziak and Brayden (Clarke), the rest of the group could play for the next year or two (in the Youth League).
“In fact Luis (Munoz) who came on, he could probably play for the next six years in it! So we made a real conscious decision. Dealing with referees, dealing with top opposition, massive clubs and badges do bring a level of confidence and arrogance.
“We made a conscious decision for this one and Brugge, no matter what happens, that’s what we were going to do, and today was a really good day for the academy, club and everybody.
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