{"id":1083,"date":"2026-04-13T20:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2026-04-13T20:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:21:10","slug":"crystal-palace-u21-2-0-under-21-match-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/?p=1083","title":{"rendered":"Crystal Palace U21 2 &#8211; 0 Under 21 &#8211; Match Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Our young Gunners fell to defeat against Crystal Palace in their final regular season fixture of the 2025\/26 PL2 campaign.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Goals either side of half-time from Joe Gibbard and Kaden Rodney secured the win for the hosts.<\/p>\n<h3 dir=\"ltr\">WHAT HAPPENED<\/h3>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The home side started brightly and almost took an early lead when Gibbard fired over from close range.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Our first opportunity came through Ceadach O\u2019Neill, who drove forward with purpose, but his effort trickled just wide of the post.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Palace continued their strong start and made the breakthrough soon after. We struggled to deal with a long, direct ball from the goalkeeper, and a miscommunication at the back allowed Gibbard to lob Khari Ranson and find the net.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">After the break, the hosts were awarded a penalty when Joel Drakes-Thomas was brought down in the area. Rodney stepped up and calmly sent Ranson the wrong way to double Palace\u2019s advantage.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">We pushed to respond, and Demiane Agustien came closest, but his strike was well saved by Harry Lee in the Palace goal.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Despite getting into some promising positions, we were unable to find the cutting edge needed in the final third.<\/p>\n<h3 dir=\"ltr\">WHAT IT MEANS<\/h3>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The result sees us finish the regular season on 29 points from 20 matches.<\/p>\n<h3 dir=\"ltr\">WHAT\u2019S NEXT<\/h3>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Our under-21s will now turn their attention to the Premier League play-offs, starting with an away tie in the last 16.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Opponent and kick-off details will be confirmed in due course.<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"node\" data-entity-uuid=\"40b1fee5-5943-41f5-b81d-3c312a33c0df\" data-embed-button=\"article_embed\" data-entity-embed-display=\"view_mode:node.tiny\" data-langcode=\"en\" data-entity-embed-display-settings=\"()\" class=\"embedded-entity u-spacing-down--xxl\">\n<article data-article-id=\"125846\" about=\"\/news\/u21s-qualify-premier-league-2-play-offs\">\n<div class=\"article-card article-card--tiny card\" data-eq-pts=\"xsmall: 200, small: 550, medium: 640, large: 768\">\n<div class=\"card__content\">\n<p>\n         <span class=\"h6 article-card__subhead\">Read more<\/span>                             <\/p>\n<h3 class=\"article-card__title\" title=\"U21s qualify for Premier League 2 play-offs\"><span class=\"article-card__title-words\">  U21s qualify for Premier League 2 play-offs <\/span><br \/>\n          <\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/article>\n<p><\/p>\n<h2 dir=\"ltr\">TEAM NEWS<\/h2>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Crystal Palace XI: <\/strong>Lee, Whyte, Jemide, King, Farquhar (Drakes-Thomas, 53), Reid, Cardines, Rodney, Umolu (Brownlie, 79), Williams (Obou, 90), Gibbard<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Subs unused:<\/strong> Left, Adams-Collman<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Arsenal XI:<\/strong> Ranson, Hamill (Ferdinand, 46), Clarke, Salmon (Ogunnaike, 46), Washington, Ibrahim, Agustien, O\u2019Neill, Harriman-Annous, Stevens (Dudziak, 60), Mooney (Bailey-Joseph, 79)<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Subs unused:<\/strong> Porter, Bailey-Joseph<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>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":"<p>Our young Gunners fell to defeat against Crystal Palace in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}