Arsenal 4 – Dover Athletic 3

Let me start by saying how proud I personally am of you all. You have come along way in the last year and a half here at Dover, as have this seasons newest players over the past 3 months.

Today was the perfect test to see just how good our U18’s squad could be, if they allowed themselves to believe.

Squad – Today, I pitted you against an exceptionally talented Arsenal development u18/u19/u20’s squad, We had everything against us, we were playing away at a foreign ground, the ref was giving decisions against us often, and technically the Arsenal team were far superior.

However, after a short period of settling in, we opened the scoring through u16’s call up player Jack Hanson who finished with a fantastic header, we switched off defensively and conceded immediately to level the score 1-1. Arsenal then took the lead with a fantastic strike from outside the box, going into he interval 2-1 down.

We re-grouped, noting it was going to be a difficult task getting back into the match, but to your credit you rose to the challenge I had set you, within 20 mins we were 2-3 up, taking the lead for the second time in the match.

That showed huge mental strength, goals from Liam Middleton and Jack Gealer were taken well. We looked the better side for at least half the match, however, in the last 10 minutes we conceded two further goals to end the match with a 4-3 loss.

That was one of the best games I have seen in a long time, end to end, exciting, possession based, attacking football, ok at times we were a little too direct, but all in all a fantastic effort. You deserved to walk off that field with your heads held high knowing you had earned the respect of the Arsenal set up who made relevant comments about you all pre match, I even had a chat with some of the Arsenal supporters who told me that had been the most exciting game they had seen this Arsenal side produce, that we tested them all over the park.

We as always, have areas to improve upon, the defensive line being dragged out of position through exceptional movement off the ball by Arsenal, our midfield units not maximising the ariel challenges and winning the first and second balls as often as we should have, the strikers/wingers with link up play, but ‘WHAT A GAME’. These are the moments we live for in the professional world, and you showed you deserve to be there playing at that level. You will always remember the day you played against a very good Arsenal side, and very nearly won the game.

I have high hopes for you all this season, well done enjoy the next few days off, as Tuesday were back to work to improve on these areas.

Parents/supporters I would like to thank you for your great support as always, it was great to see so many of you there for the lads, more importantly, for them to know you were watching one of the highlights of their footballing careers so far.

Chris Lynch
Head of Youth Development/U18 Manager
Dover Athletic FC