\n<\/p>\n
Our Premier League 2 campaign came to an end with a 3-1 defeat to Manchester City at the Joie Stadium in the first round of the play-offs. <\/p>\n
Andre Harriman-Annous gave us the lead at the end of a first half which saw Tommy Setford produce an outstanding double save from a City penalty. <\/p>\n
But the home side struck back ten minutes into the second half through Christian McFarlane, before taking the lead through Sverre Nypan six minutes later. <\/p>\n
We pushed to get back into the tie, but Ryan McAidoo’s late goal ensured the defending champions made it through to the quarter-finals. <\/p>\n
City had the first real chance of the game when the ball fell kindly for Floyd Samba on the edge of the penalty area, but Marli Salmon put in an excellent block to keep the scores level. <\/p>\n
We grew into the game and had our first chance midway through the half when Evan Mooney let fly from 20 yards out and forced a good diving save from Thorsten Spike Brits. <\/p>\n
The first big moment of the game came after 25 minutes when the home side were awarded a penalty. Nypan stepped up, but saw his effort brilliantly saved by Setford, who then got up to deny Samba with an outstanding second save on the rebound. <\/p>\n
Setford was called into action once again ten minutes before the break, racing out to meet Samba and steal the ball from the City striker’s feet after he’d run in on goal. <\/p>\n
Shortly after Setford’s save, we almost took the lead when Brando Bailey-Joseph hit the crossbar with a header from a corner, before Ife Ibrahim’s effort on the rebound was cleared off the line. <\/p>\n
But we wouldn’t be denied a few minutes later, when Evan Mooney’s shot made it’s way through a crowd of bodies to Harriman-Annous, who rifled his shot into the net from close range to put us ahead. <\/p>\n
The hosts struck back ten minutes after the break, drawing level through a composed back-post finish from McFarlane. <\/p>\n
With momentum in their favour, City swiftly went ahead when Nypan picked up a loose ball in the penalty area and fired past Setford into the back of the net. <\/p>\n
The hosts almost had a third midway through the second half when Mahamadou Sangare raced in on goal, only to be denied by an outstanding sliding challenge from Salmon. <\/p>\n
But as we pushed for a late equaliser, the Citizens worked a flowing move on the counter and McAidoo struck to seal City’s place in the quarter-finals. <\/p>\n
Man City XI: <\/strong>Brits, Nfonkeu (Henderson-Hall, 82′), Noble, Braithwaite, McFarlane, Gray, McAidoo, Samba (Dada-Mascoll, 75′), Warhurst (Sangare, 68′), Nypan, Heskey<\/p>\n Subs: <\/strong>Hudson, Parker<\/p>\n Arsenal XI: <\/strong>Setford, Nichols (Ferdinand, 84′), Salmon, Ogunnaike, Washington (Hamill, 69′), Ibrahim, Dudziak (Julienne, 78′), O’Neill, Bailey-Joseph (Agustien, 69′), Mooney, Harriman-Annous<\/p>\n Subs: <\/strong>Porter, Stakhov<\/p>\n<\/div>\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\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Our Premier League 2 campaign came to an end with<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1349","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\/1349","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=1349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialsport.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}