\n
Adam Birchall was pleased to see our under-18s convert a good performance against West Ham United into a win. <\/p>\n
Our young Gunners fell behind in the sixth-minute, but battled back to win 2-1 in east London thanks to goals from Evan Mooney and Louis Zecevic-John. <\/p>\n
“We’re really pleased,” Birchall said after the game, “a big challenge over the last month for the lads has been to turn our good performances into wins and make winning a habit. <\/p>\n
“That’s an important thing for young players. Definitely over the last month I’ve seen performances that should be wins, so today, to put on a performance and get the win was really, really pleasing. <\/p>\n
“It should have been easier, in my opinion, we had so many high-value chances. But I think we showed a lot more maturity in controlling and managing the game. Overall, a pleasing day.” <\/p>\n
Our standout player at Little Heath Sports Ground in Tuesday’s game was Louis Zecevic-John, who not only scored the winner, but did so out of position at right-back. <\/p>\n
Birchall sung Zecevic-John’s praises, but while admitting he was “really impressed” our under-18s head coach was “not surprised” by the winger-turned-full-back’s performance. <\/p>\n
“We played him there last year, I think it was against Luton in the unde-17s. He’s a player that is versatile, you see his physicality, he’s able to get up and down. <\/p>\n
“I thought his aerial duels were outstanding today, but his ability also to travel with the ball. So I think we all gave him a round of applause (in the dressing room) just because he’s playing out of position… or is he?” <\/p>\n
Zecevic-John is one of many players who have played several positions for our academy teams this season, across under-18s, under-19s and under-21s level. <\/p>\n
Birchall emphasised how important it is for young players to have that versatility that will improve their chances of turning professional. <\/p>\n
“I think all players, if you’re a good football player, I think you can play in multiple positions. It’s just whether it fits into our principles of play and our style and what we want to do. <\/p>\n
“So I think Louis showed today that he’s intelligent enough to play at right-back. But as a right-winger, for example, at times he finds himself defending deep in 1v1 duels against opposition wingers or full-backs. <\/p>\n
“The position does match a little bit in terms of what he’s been asked to do, but yeah, it’s really important that players can do it.” <\/p>\n
With plenty of the focus on our attacking players after we scored two excellent goals, Birchall was also keen to highlight our defensive qualities in seeing out the result.<\/p>\n
“We had to second year under-18s playing with the first years, which we haven’t really had a lot this season; it’s probably one of the oldest teams we’ve put out this year. But that was mainly in attacking areas, apart from Kari in goal and Josh at left-back. <\/p>\n
“I though Pat (Stachow) and Abraham (Owusu-Gyasi) at centre-back did really, really well and showed a lot of leadership in terms of helping us defend low, and I think that was a good part of the game.<\/p>\n
“Although we didn’t run away with the score, it kept it edgy and it asked things of players that have to try and get a career. As a winger foe example, Brando, can he get back and defend on the edge of the box on crosses? Things like that, rather than thinking about attacking all the time. <\/p>\n
“So yeah, the game brought up different challenges and I was pleased the players rose to them; I enjoyed today.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n Read more<\/span> <\/p>\n U18s report: West Ham United 1-2 Arsenal <\/span>
\n <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\nCopyright 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":"
Adam Birchall was pleased to see our under-18s convert a good performance against West Ham…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4247","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\/4247","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=4247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}