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.<\/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
WHAT HAPPENED<\/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
WHAT’S NEXT<\/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
LINE UPS<\/p>\n
Crystal Palace XI:\u00a0Mason, Frazer-Williams, Benamar, Walker-Smith, Bull, Okoli, Greaves, Danaher (Bernard 56), Martin, Anderson, Angibeaud.<\/p>\n
Subs not used:\u00a0Shittu, Kalembo, Moses, Lamidi.<\/p>\n
Arsenal XI: Ranson, Sampang, Stachow, Murisa, Owusu-Gyasi, Julienne, Hamill (Onyekachukwu 77), Hashi (Phillips 59), Marciniak, Bailey-Joseph, Zecevic John.<\/p>\n
Subs not used:\u00a0Lupinski, Frohock.<\/p>\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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our under-18s ended their U18 Premier League South campaign in comeback fashion, battling back from two goals down…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-444755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}