{"id":1235,"date":"2026-04-21T10:13:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T10:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socialsport.online\/?p=1235"},"modified":"2026-04-21T10:13:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T10:13:38","slug":"premier-league-2-play-off-opponents-confirmed-academy-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/?p=1235","title":{"rendered":"Premier League 2 play-off opponents confirmed | Academy | News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Our under-21s will face Manchester City in the first round of this season&#8217;s Premier League 2 play-offs, with the game confirmed for Saturday, April 25, at 7pm (UK time).<\/p>\n<p>With the regular season now complete, our young Gunners finished inside the top 16 qualifying positions, maintaining our 100% record of making the latter stages since the league&#8217;s format changed in 2023\/24.<\/p>\n<p>The overall champion of the highest tier of academy football will be decided in the 16-team play-offs, with the first round scheduled between Friday, April 24 and Monday, April 27.<\/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>Our 14th-place finish in the table means we will play away to the team that finished third, and following Ipswich Town&#8217;s 8-4 defeat to Everton last Friday, it has now been revealed that City will be our opponents in the opening round.<\/p>\n<p>We met the Citizens at the quarter-final stage last season, when goals from Khayon Edwards and Louie Copley had put us 2-0 up, before City fought back to force extra-time and went on to win the tie.<\/p>\n<article data-entity-type=\"media\" data-entity-uuid=\"515a305f-0b67-4841-a33d-9b8cd25a652f\" data-embed-button=\"video_embed\" data-entity-embed-display=\"view_mode:media.full\" data-video-embed-up-next-tray=\"default\" data-langcode=\"en\" data-entity-embed-display-settings=\"()\" class=\"embedded-entity u-spacing-down--xxl\">\n<\/article>\n<p>The Round of 16 fixture will be played at Joie Stadium at 7pm, with the winner taking on Aston Villa or Southampton in the next round.<\/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 under-21s will face Manchester City in the first round<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1235","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\/1235","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=1235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}