NextGen Series

Olympiacos 2 (Soukias 83, Leandro 89) Arsenal 0

The Georgios Karaiskakis Stadium has not been a kind place to Arsenal’s youngsters in recent years. Following on from the two Champions League group stage defeats in the past few seasons in what were effectively dead rubbers, tonight Arsenal U19s dropped their first points in their NextGen Series campaign after conceding two late goals to Olympiacos, blows which were compounded by the sending off of right-back Hector Bellerin for two bookable offences.

After a tame opening period in which neither side created too many clear-cut opportunities, Terry Burton’s young Gunners rather lost their way in the second period, with the absence of a natural attacking midfielder, both Kristoffer Olsson and Jon Toral were unavailable, proving key. Burton made several changes to the side that swept Marseille aside a fortnight ago, with Reice Charles-Cook making his first appearance of the season in goal, whilst there were also starts for Isaac Hayden and Anthony Jeffrey, with Kyle Ebecilio moving into a more advanced midfield role.

In front of a small crowd, the early stages of the game lacked conviction, but Charles-Cook, back from a lengthy spell on the sidelines, had to be alert to react to Charalampos Lykogiannis’ free-kick. Arsenal, though, struggled to engineer many attacking moves of their own in the opening stages, save for a cross from Bellerin which was easily dealt with.

Both sides were engaged in a period of scrappy play before the dynamic Serge Gnabry threatened to illuminate proceedings with an inventive run from deep. Gnabry, in a demonstration of his undoubted quality, manoeuvred his way past two defenders before flashing a shot wide, then Jeffrey, operating on the right flank on this occasion, did well to pick out Ebecilio, with the Dutchman unfortunate to see his effort go just over.

At the other end, Charles-Cook had to push away a Dimitris Rikspun effort in the final meaningful event of what was, in truth, a rather tame first half.

Shortly after the interval captain Nico Yennaris drove a shot towards goal but his attempt was just cut out, then both sides had penalty claims turned down. In the midst of all that, Gnabry floated a rather harmless free-kick wide, before Charles-Cook made another impressive save.

By this point, Arsenal had thrown on Thomas Eisfeld and Alex Iwobi as they sought to snatch a win, but Olympiacos would pounce late on. Charles-Cook had held Nikos Ioannidis’ initial effort, but could not get back up in time to prevent substitute Rafail Soukias from turning home the rebound.

Bellerin was then sent off for his second bookable offence after a mis-timed challenge on the edge of the area and Leanadro curled home a stunning free-kick to inflict further pain on Burton’s charges.

Their overall performance may not have been the best, but this was a big learning curve for the Arsenal youngsters, and, when the whole nature of the trip and all that comes with it; flying out, staying in hotels and preparing for matches is taking into account, it will surely be able to be looked back on as a valuable experience.

Arsenal: Charles-Cook; Bellerin, Monteiro, Hajrovic, Angha; Yennaris, Hayden (Iwobi 79); Jeffrey (Eisfeld 58), Ebecilio, Gnabry (Lipman 89); Akpom. Not used: Vickers, Ormonde-Ottewill, Fagan, Mugabo.