Reiss Nelson was full of praise for our new under-23s manager Freddie Ljungberg on Monday night.

Nelson scored against Brighton & Hove Albion in his first outing of the season, but despite conceding an equaliser at the death, he’s confident that we’re moving in the right direction under the Arsenal legend’s guidance.

on the team’s performance…

I think we started a bit sloppy and let them go with the flow and let them move the ball side to side, but as the game progressed we started to move the ball better and we started to open them up.

on facing a number of Brighton’s first-team squad…

I think it will be good for a couple of the young lads to get experience playing against older players and some more experienced players, so it’s a really good test for them

on conceding so late…

It’s one of those things, it’s a disaster. I think we need to go back and watch the video and see it back and see where we went wrong, then when next week comes we can make sure we don’t do that again.

on showing far greater defensive resilience after conceding six against Man City…

Yeah, I heard about last week’s goals! But in this week’s training we worked on a lot of pressing from the front to show them one way, then when it got to the back I thought we were compact and we didn’t let any sloppy goals go in, just the one at the end so that’s something to learn from.

on what kind of challenges Brighton posed…

When I was on the left I felt that they doubled up quite well, so it was hard me to get them in a one on one situation, so I had to keep cutting in and once I cut in there was already another player, so that’s something Freddie spoke about and he changed it. He put Bukayo on the left and put me on the right and he told Bukayo to go down the line because he’s very fast and that’s where the goal came from, so it was good!

on Ljungberg’s demands on the squad…

They’re very high and he’s a great coach as well and I think he’s got very high standards for the young group that we have. I think we can go on to carry our trophy again this season if we play well and train hard.

on being desperate to record their first win on Friday against West Ham…

Of course, I think we need to sit down and properly speak to each other and see what went wrong, so that once Friday comes we can solve it and do well for the team.