Arsenal Under-21s coach Max Porter provided an assessment of his team’s display after the 2-0 defeat to National League South side Chelmsford City.
A goal in each half made the difference at the Melbourne Stadium, and after the match, Porter identified areas that required improvement before looking ahead to our final pre-season game against Monaco II.
On the match…
“Well, first thing, the slow starts. We’ve got to learn quickly, and we, as staff, have got to reflect on something that maybe we’re doing, the players are doing, but we keep giving away these cheap goals.
“I know we work in development, but the development is to learn to win, so that can’t happen because you’re always playing catch-up. I think we were finding the spaces between the lines, but I didn’t think we were progressing the ball well enough, so I felt putting Charles [Sagoe-Jr] in those spaces between helped us get through the pitch with his dribbling ability.
“There was also another change to the system, we swapped Demian [Agustien] and Harrison [Dudziak] so that they were on the opposite sides, so they would be coming in on their inverted foot, so it would open the play up.
“So there were two little changes there, it helped us, but to no avail in terms of the scoreline, but our performance was definitely better.”
On the difference between today and Enfield Town…
“First thing, I’m not sure it’s unlucky when you don’t make the right pass back to your keeper. That’s a real bad error; we’ve got to be better than that. We can’t be giving the goals away like that, so I think that’s us shooting ourselves in the foot.
“In terms of what we improved upon from the game against Enfield, definitely the direct play for the whole game, I think we dealt with it very well.
“Credit to the boys with that. I think in terms of whether we had more of an impetus in the second half, it looked like we had more threat, it looked like we created more chances. I still think we need to be taking more shots.
“If we don’t shoot, we’re not going to score. So there were a few moments where I felt that we could have got shots off sooner. So yes, I think there were some positives and developments, but still a lot of work to go.”
On the final pre-season match…
“I think we’re hoping that we might have a few of the boys back who’ve been fortunate enough to be with our first team. They’ve had a brilliant experience going to Asia.
“This game just came a bit too soon, so if they’re not involved with the first team, it would be brilliant to get them some more minutes in the build-up to the season. I think that would be good for the group. I think we need to keep working on our attacking play, particularly against the final third.
“Can we create some more chances, some better types of chances? I think Monaco will be a different test. We’ve had a lot of games against non-league opposition, and that brings certain things that we have to deal with, direct play and the physicality. I think Monaco will be more the type of game that suits us, a tactical, technical game.
“So yes, really looking forward to it. We had a tough game against them in the UEFA Youth League last year. We were fortunate to win that game in terms of we played well, but they were a very, very good team.
“We’re looking forward to it. Hopefully, that will put us in a good place for when we play Fulham the week after.”
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