Adam Birchall praised the way our under-18s took on board the lessons from last week’s win over Norwich in our 3-2 victory over Southampton on Saturday.
Ceadach O’Neill gave us the lead shortly before half time, only for Harry Gathercole to equalise at the start of the second half.
O'Neill restored our lead shortly after conceding the equaliser, before Maalik Hashi curled an excellent free-kick into the top corner to double our lead.
The Saints struck back with a late penalty, but we held on to take all three points.
[Read more
U18s report: Arsenal 3-2 Southampton](https://www.arsenal.com/fixture/under-18/2025-Aug-23/under-18-3-2-southampton-u18-match-report?utm_source=arsenaldotcom&utm_medium=embedded-article&utm_campaign=news)
Speaking after the game, Birchall was delighted with the improvements our young Gunners had made in the space of a week.
“We spoke last week after the Norwich game and I was really pleased with our players taking a bit more responsibility in terms of our gameplan and the intention we had.
“You could see they’ve really been studying throughout the week and I saw that come out tactically in the game, but not in a way where they still weren’t able to be free and show their quality.
“I thought it was a very good academy game, a really good under-18s academy game, both teams with good intentions with the ball and without the ball, to win the ball high up.”
Last week’s win over Norwich turned on a triple change Birchall made to bring on Hashi and O’Neill alongside Teshaun Murisa; all three players started against the Saints and earned the praises of their manager.
“Truth is, I think the game could have been easier, obviously two set piece goals we need to fix, but generally really happy, happy with Ceadach to get a couple of goals and I think Teshaun coming in today was immense for us in midfield.
“They had a fantastic impact last week and obviously that’s helped them with confidence coming into this game. It’s important that we know we’ve got a really good squad this year, multiple options for games.
“I think players at times will need to be rotated and get the experience of coming off the bench. I think that’s really important in general, but very pleased with those guys in particular.”
With back-to-back wins under our belts to start our U18s Premier League South campaign, attention now turns to the Premier League Cup. Our first tie in this season’s competition takes place against Peterborough United on Tuesday, providing a challenge Adam Birchall is looking forward to.
“We just spoke about Tuesday and it’s really important, now we’re playing Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, that this is a chance for the players to explore and develop the understanding of recovery, nutrition, that type of thing, getting ready for the Tuesday game.
“But you know me, it will always be build on this game, and I was really pleased with so many elements of it, but there were areas we need to improve. And of course even the areas we were good at, we can improve.”
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.