\n<\/p>\n
Our under-18s were narrowly defeated 1-0 away to Ipswich Town in the U18 Premier League South.<\/p>\n
In the game in Suffolk, Matthew Compton had the Tractor Boys in front within the opening minutes of the first 45.<\/p>\n
Despite plenty of chances and the large majority of possession, we were unable to find a way back into the tie.<\/p>\n
We were behind early after a free-kick was given away in a dangerous area for Bobby Sains to roll into Compton, who fired an effort goalward and took a heavy deflection to beat Remi Lupinski.<\/p>\n
The push for an equaliser began through Alex Marciniak, who provided a series of inswingers, first for Louis Zecevic John to try his luck with, before Saurap Sampang saw his shot blocked from close range.<\/p>\n
It was then Mishel Nduka’s turn to benefit from a Maricniak cross, with another good ball delivered to the far post that could only be directed over Town’s upright. The Wales under-17’s international then played a neat backheeled pass into Zecevic John, but his shot was straight at Joshua Bentley.<\/p>\n
Our best chance of the opening half-hour arrived through a forced error on Bentley, who misplaced his pass for Zecevic John to pounce upon and pick out Nduka, but the Ipswich goalkeeper recovered well to parry behind.<\/p>\n
We continued our attempts to fight back after the interval, as Maalik Hashi almost finished off a delightful link-up play between Nduka and Marciniak through the middle of the park.<\/p>\n
Substitute Kyran Thompson looked to spark the breakthrough with a neat ball into Zecevic John, but Ipswich’s no.1 was quick off his line to close down the shot and force the ball clear.<\/p>\n
We came agonisingly close to getting back level late on, via a counter-attack that began with Marciniak. The playmaker found Thompson free on the left flank, who picked out Zecevic John inside the six-yard box, but again the chance was placed wide of the target and came as our last opportunity of the affair.<\/p>\n
Our under-18s continue their U18 Premier League South campaign with a trip to West Bromwich Albion on Tuesday, March 17.<\/p>\n
Kick-off at Palm Training Ground is scheduled for 1pm (UK time).<\/p>\n
Ipswich Town XI: <\/strong>Bentley, Hammond, Berkeley-Agyepong, Duggins (Ness 67), Wilkinson, Sains, Adetiba (Pedder 55), Compton, Ladegbaye, Eze, Nicolaou (Wreford 78).<\/p>\n Subs not used: <\/strong>Take it easy, Boakye-King.<\/p>\n Arsenal XI: <\/strong>Lupinski, Stachow, Murisa, Owusu-Gyasi (Pedro 61), Mbala, Nwaneri, Sampang (B.Phillips 61), Hashi, Nduka (Thompson 61), Marciniak (Purdy 82), Zecevic John.<\/p>\n Subs not used: <\/strong>C.Phillips.<\/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 were narrowly defeated 1-0 away to Ipswich Town in the U18 Premier League South. In the game in Suffolk, Matthew Compton had the Tractor Boys in front within … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":887,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-886","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\/886","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=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ipsport.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}