\n<\/p>\n
Our under-18s ended their U18 Premier League South campaign in comeback fashion, battling back from two goals down to draw 2-2 with Crystal Palace.<\/strong><\/p>\n A busy first 45 saw Donte Martin and Raihaan Anderson give the home side a healthy score margin within the first ten minutes, before goals from Maalik Hashi and Brando Bailey-Joseph sparked a fightback to restore parity before the break.<\/p>\n A quieter second half followed as the points were ultimately shared, bringing our season to a close with a point on the road.<\/p>\n We got off to a slow start and conceded early when Martin pounced on a loose clearance and floated a ball onto the far post, which deflected into the net.<\/p>\n Palace then doubled their lead within minutes through Anderson, who benefited from more defensive troubles. A long throw-in ricocheted off Callan Hamill and fell to the forward, who tapped home from close range.<\/p>\n Hope was found before the half-hour mark when Hashi stole the ball off the Eagles’ back line and drove forward, before curling his finish into the bottom left corner.<\/p>\n We were back level within minutes of the restart, orchestrated again by Hashi, who whipped a ball wide to Bailey-Joseph. Our winger beat Dean Benamar and smashed his near-post effort under Jack Mason’s outstretched gloves.<\/p>\n We finished the half on top and came close to taking the lead when Bailey-Joseph used his electric pace down the right wing to beat Khyan Fraser-Williams and cut a cross into a sea of shirts, but it was a Palace jersey that got there first to clear the danger.<\/p>\n We began the second half with continued momentum, producing a flurry of attempts that also saw Mason shown a red card, leaving Palace without a recognised goalkeeper on the bench to bring on.<\/p>\n We struggled to create clear-cut chances to test the makeshift no.1’s resolve, as the game in south London ended in a 2-2 draw to sign off the season.<\/p>\n Our U18 Premier League South campaign concludes with a 10th-place finish, and the young Gunners will return in mid-July to begin their pre-season preparations for 2026\/27.<\/p>\n Crystal Palace XI: <\/strong>Mason, Frazer-Williams, Benamar, Walker-Smith, Bull, Okoli, Greaves, Danaher (Bernard 56), Martin, Anderson, Angibeaud.<\/p>\n Subs not used: <\/strong>Shittu, Kalembo, Moses, Lamidi.<\/p>\n Arsenal XI:<\/strong> Ranson, Sampang, Stachow, Murisa, Owusu-Gyasi, Julienne, Hamill (Onyekachukwu 77), Hashi (Phillips 59), Marciniak, Bailey-Joseph, Zecevic John.<\/p>\n Subs not used: <\/strong>Lupinski, Frohock.<\/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 under-18s ended their U18 Premier League South campaign in comeback fashion, battling back from two goals down to draw 2-2 with Crystal Palace. A busy first 45 saw Donte … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3281,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3299","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\/3299","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=3299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}WHAT HAPPENED<\/h2>\n
WHAT’S NEXT<\/h2>\n
LINE UPS<\/h2>\n