{"id":2747,"date":"2026-05-01T10:45:05","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T10:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=2747"},"modified":"2026-05-01T10:45:05","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T10:45:05","slug":"u18s-preview-leicester-city-v-arsenal-match-preview-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=2747","title":{"rendered":"U18s preview: Leicester City v Arsenal | Match preview | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Our young Gunners aim to return to winning ways in the U18s Premier League South, on the road to Leicester City on Saturday, May 2.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The match will take place at the LCFC Training Ground, with kick-off scheduled for 11:30am (UK time).<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">For the second game in a row, our under-18s narrowly lost a high-scoring contest on Tuesday, going down 3-2 to Crystal Palace after last week\u2019s 4-3 defeat to West Ham United.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Despite twice leading through goals from Ceadach O&#8217;Neill and Louis Zecevic John, the Eagles fought back and went on to steal a late winner. The result leaves us 11th on 28 points, with four games remaining.<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"media\" data-entity-uuid=\"f819104f-c08e-4f14-967e-2cedf5d0462f\" data-embed-button=\"video_embed\" data-entity-embed-display=\"view_mode:media.full\" data-video-embed-up-next-tray=\"default\" data-langcode=\"en\" data-entity-embed-display-settings=\"()\" class=\"embedded-entity u-spacing-down--xxl\">\n<\/article>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>THE OPPOSITION<\/h2>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Much like us, the Foxes have produced a league campaign of mixed results, registering back-to-back wins on only a handful of occasions. Since beating Crystal Palace and Birmingham City within a week in February, their last three points came against Southampton the following month.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The East Midlands side were beaten 3-1 by the Saints in the reverse fixture a week ago, which leaves them ninth on 35 points.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In other competitions, City exited Group B of the U18 Premier League Cup after finishing third behind Aston Villa and Liverpool. Their FA Youth Cup run was ended in the third round by Bolton Wanderers on penalties, following a 2-2 draw after extra-time.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">We last faced the Foxes earlier in January, when O&#8217;Neill&#8217;s second-half equaliser wasn&#8217;t enough to prevent a stoppage-time blow, in a 2-1 defeat at the Sobha Realty Training Centre.<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"media\" data-entity-uuid=\"a152695c-b519-493d-8756-96bce4698f4b\" data-embed-button=\"video_embed\" data-entity-embed-display=\"view_mode:media.full\" data-video-embed-up-next-tray=\"default\" data-langcode=\"en\" data-entity-embed-display-settings=\"()\" class=\"embedded-entity u-spacing-down--xxl\">\n<\/article>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>HOW TO FOLLOW<\/h2>\n<p>Kick-off is at 11:30am (UK time). Live updates will be available on our <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/arsenalacademy\" target=\"_blank\">academy&#8217;s official X account<\/a>with a full match report on The Arsenal app and Arsenal.com shortly after the final whistle.<\/p>\n<p>Post-match, supporters can catch interviews and highlights of all the key action from the LCFC Training Ground.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Copyright 2026 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.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our young Gunners aim to return to winning ways in the U18s Premier League South,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2748,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}