Foot & Soccer Soccer Match Reports, Football News
Morning campers! Tim Stillman here for the final time before Andrew returns to the keyboard tomorrow. Yesterday I took in the delights of Sincil Bank to watch the Arsenal U21s take on Lincoln City. Ground number 70 of the 92 and that, dear reader, was the entire reason that I went to the game!
It was a really interesting test for the youngsters though, they lost to Bishop’s Stortford on Wednesday evening- which isn’t an enormously unusual result at this stage of pre-season. We’re talking about lads of 16 or 17 locking horns with fully developed and fully grown men accustomed to playing physical football.
I was anticipating the youngsters getting a proper hammering (I once watched an Arsenal XI team containing Hector Bellerin and Serge Gnabry lose 7-0 to Luton Town at this stage of pre-season- when Luton were in the fifth tier). For the U21s to only lose 2-1 to Lincoln having taken a second half lead was a very impressive showing. They controlled the first half but, as the game wore on, the physical advantages enjoyed by a League One side one week away from the start of their season became evident. An enjoyable day out, all in all.
Onto matters more senior and now the team will be fully gearing up for a couple of friendlies against Bayer Leverkusen on Wednesday and Lyon next Sunday. Saka, Raya, Ramsdale and Rice have all returned to Colney and it will be really interesting to see what the next few weeks hold for Aaron Ramsdale. I mean, his Arsenal future has to be in some serious doubt but there are complications.
Firstly, Arsenal haven’t been able to procure a replacement goalkeeper yet, they haven’t even been able to get the third choice goalkeeper they want with Wolves rejecting Arsenal’s bid of a bag of Maltesers, some training cones and William Saliba’s beard comb for Dan Bentley. Karl Hein has looked good in pre-season but surely part of the agreement that saw him extend his contract this summer was that he would be allowed to go out on…
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/08/u21s-lincoln-what-next-ramsdale-awfc-return-for-pre-season/
Author : Tim Stillman
Publish date : 2024-08-04 07:08:50
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