Our under-21s were beaten 3-1 by Cardiff City on Tuesday night, bringing our Vertu Trophy campaign to an end.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marcell Washington gave us an early lead with a fine strike from the edge of the penalty area, before Troy Perrett equalised from close range just two minutes later.<\/p>\n
After an even opening hour at the Cardiff City Stadium, Alexei Rojas was shown a red card. The Bluebirds made use of their man advantage, and won the game through Will Spiers and Trey George goals in the second half.<\/p>\n
WHAT HAPPENED<\/p>\n
The first opportunity of the game came in the opening minute when Charles Sagoe Jr latched onto a cross at the far post and saw his effort deflected out for a corner.<\/p>\n
Sagoe Jr was involved in the opening goal 15 minutes later, picking out Marcell Washington who rifled the ball into the bottom corner from the edge of the penalty area.<\/p>\n
The hosts wasted no time in hitting back though, Troy Perrett evading Sam Onyekachukwu to convert the equaliser with the first attack after the restart.<\/p>\n
Midway through the half, Sagoe Jr came close with a spectacular effort, curling the ball just wide of the post with his back to goal outside the penalty area.<\/p>\n
Cardiff made a strong start to the second half and almost had the lead three minutes after the break when Will Spiers struck the crossbar at the end of a well-worked set-piece routine.<\/p>\n
The evening then took a turn for the worse for us when Alexei Rojas came out to close down a loose back pass and brought a Cardiff City attacker down, resulting in a red card for our goalkeeper.<\/p>\n
Moments after the red card, Perrett almost had a second with a low shot towards the bottom corner, but was denied by a last-ditch block from Ife Ibrahim.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cardiff took the lead midway through the second half when Will Spiers’ cross took a deflection and wrong-footed substitute goalkeeper Remy Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Despite being a man down, we had an excellent opportunity to equalise when Brando Bailey-Joseph made a brilliant run and set up Sagoe Jr, but the winger miscued his effort from 12 yards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While we pushed for an equaliser, the Bluebirds caught us on the break and secured the points with a late goal from Trey George.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WHAT\u2019S NEXT<\/p>\n
Our under-21s now begin their winter break, with the Premier League 2 on hiatus until 2026.<\/p>\n
After the international break, several of our under-21s players will be involved in our UEFA Youth League clash with Bayern Munich on Wednesday, November 26.<\/p>\n
LINE-UPS<\/p>\n
Cardiff City: Turner, Keita, Perrett (Watts, 88′), Spiers, Kingdon, Parfitt (Davies, 55′), Apter, Debono, Twose, George, Ola (Pearce, 46′, Sykes, 80′)<\/p>\n
Subs: Dennis, Hobson, Hilaire-Clarke<\/p>\n
Arsenal: Rojas, King, Onyekachukwu (Stevens, 86′) Sweet, Washington (Ogunnaike, 72′), Ibrahim (Julienne, 72′), Dudziak (Mitchell, 62′), Copley, Kamara (Bailey-Joseph, 62′), Harriman-Annous, Sagoe Jr<\/p>\n
Subs: Nichols, Owusu-Gyasi
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 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-21s were beaten 3-1 by Cardiff City on Tuesday night, bringing our Vertu Trophy campaign to an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-257940","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}