\n<\/p>\n
Our young Gunners were beaten 3-1 away at Sunderland in the Premier League 2 on Monday.<\/p>\n
The home side took an early lead at Eppleton Colliery Football Ground through Ahmed Abdullahi, before finishes from Jenson Jones and Ben Kindon had them three up by the break.<\/p>\n
Andre Harriman-Annous struck after half-time to offer a vital lifeline, but minutes ticked on as we were unable to find any follow-up returns.<\/p>\n
We got off to the worst possible start when Abdullahi ran through unchallenged and placed his shot through Remy Mitchell’s legs to give the Black Cats the lead within two minutes.<\/p>\n
We looked to have found a response when Joseph Cowan dropped Theo Julienne’s cross, which was headed goalward by Archie Stevens and tapped in by Maalik Hashi, but the 17-year-old was deemed to be in an offside position.<\/p>\n
The Wearside outfit doubled their lead moments later, though, when a well-worked move found Charles Dinsdale out wide, who sent a low ball across our box, guided home by Jenson Jones.<\/p>\n
We were awarded a potential route back into the game on the half-hour mark, when Harriman-Annous was tripped in the box by Jack Whittaker. However, our forward was denied by a strong palm from Cowan, who was quick to dive low to his right.<\/p>\n
Sunderland had a third on the stroke of half-time. Kindon broke free at the back post to latch onto Whittaker’s inswinging corner, able to poke home from a yard out.<\/p>\n
Harriman-Annous offered us a glimmer of hope after the interval, finding Evan Mooney’s cutback and curling a wonderful first-time finish beyond the goalkeeper, into the top-right corner.<\/p>\n
We kept on pushing, and almost reduced the deficit further when Mooney picked out Seb Ferdiand on the right flank for our full-back to fizz his shot back across the net, only marginally clearing Cowan’s woodwork.<\/p>\n
The hosts were able to nullify any further response and saw out the remainder of the game, which ended 3-1, delaying our play-off confirmation for another gameweek.<\/p>\n
Our under-21s will look to secure a spot in the top 16 when they host West Bromwich Albion on Saturday, April 4.<\/p>\n
Kick-off at Mangata Developments Stadium is at 2pm (UK time).<\/p>\n
Sunderland XI: <\/strong>Cowan, Je.Jones (Lienard 84), Lightfoot, Ja.Jones, Holcroft, Kindon, Dinsdale (Lenz 65), Whittaker, Abdullahi (Proctor 64), H.Jones, Scott (Campbell 65).<\/p>\n Subs unused: <\/strong>Metcalf.<\/p>\n Arsenal XI: <\/strong>Mitchell, Ferdinand, Ogunnaike, Owusu-Gyasi, Chapman (Murisa 88), Ibrahim, Stevens (Hamill 62), Julienne, Mooney, Hashi (Nduka 71), Harriman-Annous.<\/p>\n Subs unused: <\/strong>Bailey-Joseph.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 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":" Our young Gunners were beaten 3-1 away at Sunderland in the Premier League 2 on Monday. The home side took an early lead at Eppleton Colliery Football Ground through Ahmed … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}