{"id":309,"date":"2026-04-24T05:54:58","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T05:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=309"},"modified":"2026-04-24T05:54:58","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T05:54:58","slug":"u21s-preview-manchester-city-v-arsenal-match-preview-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=309","title":{"rendered":"U21s preview: Manchester City v Arsenal | Match preview | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Our under-21s face Manchester City on Saturday, April 25 (7pm UK) at Joie Stadium in the first round of the Premier League 2 play-offs, looking to advance to the last eight of the competition. <\/p>\n<p>We finished the regular season in 14th-place in the league table, setting up a clash with the Citizens after the defending PL2 Champions finished third, three points behind Chelsea and Manchester United. <\/p>\n<p>With another play-off berth secured, we&#8217;ve maintained our 100% record of qualifying for the post-season tournament, with standout wins over Wolves, Leeds United and Reading along the way.<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"media\" data-entity-uuid=\"22d90192-1ccc-4848-a130-d53e88e40956\" 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>Manchester City enjoyed a successful season in PL2, winning 13 of their 20 regular season matches. The Citizens finished the season on strong form too, winning their final four fixtures. <\/p>\n<p>Despite finishing third, City had the best attack and defence in the division this season, scoring 59 goals and conceding just 21 across 20 league games. <\/p>\n<p>Forwards Mahamadou Sangare and Matty Warhurst have been the standout players for the defending champions, with twenty goals between them this season in all competitions. <\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"media\" data-entity-uuid=\"f6350094-04c4-4b8b-98ec-e5cc32bea126\" data-embed-button=\"image_embed\" data-entity-embed-display=\"view_mode:media.card\" data-entity-embed-display-settings=\"()\" data-langcode=\"en\" class=\"embedded-entity u-spacing-down--xxl\">\n<article>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2>Last Season&#8217;s Play-offs<\/h2>\n<p>This will be the second straight season which takes us to Joie Stadium in the Premier League 2 play-offs. <\/p>\n<p>Last time around, our knockout campaign began with a memorable 2-1 win over Newcastle United, courtesy of a stoppage time penalty from Khayon Edwards.<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"media\" data-entity-uuid=\"81e7a015-d870-4277-9ae7-298ea5dc1369\" 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>We then travelled to Manchester to face City, and started brightly, taking the lead in the first minute before doubling our lead shortly after half-time. <\/p>\n<p>But City fought back to level the tie at 2-2, before netting the winner in extra time to reach the last four. <\/p>\n<p>The Citizens then went on to beat rivals Manchester United in the semi-finals and Southampton in the final, both by a 2-0 scoreline. <\/p>\n<h2>How to Follow<\/h2>\n<p>Live updates will be available throughout the game on our <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ArsenalAcademy\" target=\"_blank\">academy&#8217;s official X account<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Post match, highlights will be available on the Arsenal app and on Arsenal.com. <\/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 under-21s face Manchester City on Saturday, April 25 (7pm UK) at Joie Stadium in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","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\/309","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=309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}