{"id":5887,"date":"2026-05-08T11:46:55","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=5887"},"modified":"2026-05-08T11:46:55","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T11:46:55","slug":"u18s-preview-arsenal-v-reading-match-preview-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=5887","title":{"rendered":"U18s preview: Arsenal v Reading | Match preview | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Our young Gunners will aim to secure back-to-back victories in their penultimate league game of the season when they host Reading on Saturday, May 9. Kick-off at Sobha Realty Training Centre is scheduled for 11:30am (UK).<\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Last time out, Adam Birchall\u2019s side produced a comeback to defeat West Ham United, with goals either side of half-time from Evan Mooney and Louis Ze\u010devi\u0107-John sealing the win.<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"media\" data-entity-uuid=\"91547103-ad63-4c6a-8683-123a80b7795d\" 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<h3 dir=\"ltr\">The Opposition<\/h3>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Reading currently sit 13th in the Under-18s Premier League South table and come into this fixture on a difficult run of form, having lost three of their last four matches. During that spell, the Royals have conceded 15 goals while scoring just five.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Their most recent victory came in early April, when they edged past West Ham United with a 2-1 win.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">This will be the second meeting between the sides in just over two weeks, following our 3-0 victory in the reverse fixture on April 22. On that occasion, Alex Marciniak netted a brace, with Emerson Nwaneri also getting on the scoresheet.<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"media\" data-entity-uuid=\"f234e49b-0258-4b8e-b123-4ef1b1a29da9\" 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<h3 dir=\"ltr\">How to Follow<\/h3>\n<p>As ever, live updates will be available pre-match, during the game and post-match on our <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ArsenalAcademy\" target=\"_blank\">academy&#8217;s official X account<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Post-match, a full match report will be available on the Arsenal app and Arsenal.com, as well as highlights of all the key action and interviews with under-18s head coach Adam Birchall and one of our young Gunners. <\/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 will aim to secure back-to-back victories in their penultimate league game of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5887","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\/5887","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=5887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}