{"id":3397,"date":"2026-05-03T08:01:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T08:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=3397"},"modified":"2026-05-03T08:01:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T08:01:35","slug":"young-gun-josh-tahou-feature-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=3397","title":{"rendered":"Young Gun: Josh Tahou | Feature | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><strong><em>Our Young Gun series gets to know the academy youngsters kicking off their careers at the Sobha Realty Training Centre.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Josh Tahou reflects on an injury-hit season and how he&#8217;s using the memories of his career highlights to push himself back towards full fitness. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>I grew up in the Brixton area, and football started for me just playing in the park with my brother. From around the age of five, I fell in love with the game. My first team was Club Langley JFC, where I began to take things more seriously. <\/p>\n<p>After a few years at Club Langley, I was scouted by Chelsea and joined at under-9s level. When I first went to Cobham for my trial, I wasn&#8217;t too nervous. I already knew some of the players, and at that age you are just playing for the love of the game rather than thinking too far ahead. <\/p>\n<p>At the end of my under-14s year, I left Chelsea, and Arsenal came in for me, which was a great feeling. It helped that I already knew Maalik Hashi from our time at Chelsea. <\/p>\n<p>Playing in the Youth Cup quarter-final at Emirates (Stadium) against Manchester United last season was an experience I will never forget &#8211; neither will my family. Despite the result, it was really special to have that experience around an Emirates matchday and to get some minutes on the pitch was I was still a schoolboy was amazing. <\/p>\n<p>Receiving my scholarship meant a lot, not just to me but to my family as well. Making them proud was a big moment. The step up from Hale End to Sobha is real, but the fundamentals of the game stay the same. <\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"media\" data-entity-uuid=\"d9e6ed56-0cc5-4edc-8e70-80d9cedfbb79\" 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>This season has been particularly tough for me due to a hamstring injury that has kept me out for a long period. I have really missed playing, but I stay grounded in my faith and believe everything happens for a reason. I will be back next season, ready to go. <\/p>\n<p>I still have had opportunities to train at times and even be involved with the first team. Training alongside players like Gabriel Jesus has been a great experience. He is a serious trainer, technically top, very skilful and tough to play against. <\/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 Gun series gets to know the academy youngsters kicking off their careers at&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3398,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3397","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\/3397","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=3397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}