\n<\/p>\n
Our under-18s found a stoppage-time winner to beat Aston Villa 2-1 away in the U18 Premier League South on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Louis Zecevic John converted the penalty he won to open the scoring from 12 yards at Bodymoor Heath Training Ground.<\/p>\n
Vincely Mudame was sent off for the West Midlands side after the interval, but the extra player could not prevent Joshua Blake from finding a response late on.<\/p>\n
We pushed on for a winner and were rewarded with our efforts when Angelino Pedro was in the right place to net with seconds to spare.<\/p>\n
Our first chance of the affair was carved out by Charlie Purdy, who sent a cross into the box from the left-hand side for Marley Frohock to meet in the air, but our striker glanced his header wide of the post.<\/p>\n
We took the lead soon after when Zecevic John was brought down in the Villa area and made no mistake from the spot to put us ahead inside 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
The home side began to build momentum before the half was out, and it required a goalline block from Abraham Owusu-Gyasi to deny Harry Pinnell from close range, before Jahmi Kellyman blazed over the rebound to keep our lead intact.<\/p>\n
The Villans were reduced to ten shortly after the break as Mudame saw red for a last-man foul on Zecevic John. Teshaun Murisa came close to doubling our lead from the resulting free-kick, which was initially blocked before firing marginally over from 25 yards out.<\/p>\n
We began to dictate the tempo with the numerical advantage, and it was Owusu-Gyasi who threatened next, his goalbound header ultimately hacked clear to safety.<\/p>\n
Against the run of play, the home side launched a long clearance upfield, which Joshua Blake latched onto. Unchallenged, the forward drove through on Jack Talbot and slotted past our goalkeeper to level the tie with 15 minutes to go.<\/p>\n
In search of a winner, Kyran Thompson shrugged off his defender to create space in the box and pulled the trigger, but his effort deflected off Rhys Oakley and sailed over.<\/p>\n
We continued to roll the dice, and it paid off deep into added time. Thompson whipped in a corner that bounced off the post and into a scramble of players, but Pedro was on hand to tap home and seal all three points for our young Gunners.<\/p>\n
Our under-18s will continue their U18 Premier League South campaign when they host Norwich City on Saturday, February 28.<\/p>\n
Kick-off at Sobha Reality Training Centre is scheduled for 12pm (UK time).<\/p>\n
Aston Villa XI: <\/strong>Oakley, Atkins (Iyeli 86), Pinnell, Mudame, Ketebu, Moss, Hayward, Melhuish, Hammond, Kellyman (Adediran 86), Blake (Mitchell 76).<\/p>\n Subs not used: <\/strong>Houston, Rufus.<\/p>\n Arsenal XI: <\/strong>Talbot, Mbala (Tahou 65), Chapman, Pedro, Owusu-Gyasi, Murisa, Sampang, Purdy (Hashi 59), Zecevic John, Thompson, Frohock (Abubakar 65).<\/p>\n Subs not used: <\/strong>Phillips, Odaji-Ukeku.<\/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 found a stoppage-time winner to beat Aston Villa 2-1 away in the U18 Premier League South on Saturday. Louis Zecevic John converted the penalty he won to open … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87","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\/87","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=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}