Arsenal under-18s stretched their unbeaten run to five games on Saturday as they came from 2-0 down to draw away to West Ham.
The young Guns made four changes to the side that beat Brighton 3-1 in their last game at this level, with Joe Willock, Vlad Dragomir, Tolaji Bola and Eddie Nketiah coming into the side.
Frans de Kat’s side made a poor start to the game, and after 15 minutes found themselves a goal down. Mourgos made a mess of controlling Chatzitheodoridis’ pass in his own defensive third, allowing Jahmal Hector-Ingram to run clear and score low past Huddart.
A few minutes later 1-0 became 2-0 as Dan Kemp crossed in from the right-hand side and Hector-Ingram escaped the attentions of Kristopher Da Graca to head in from close range for his and West Ham’s second.
However, Eddie Nketiah is a striker in red-hot form at the moment and it didn’t take him long to halve the deficit. After a slight misjudgement in the West Ham defence, Nketiah showed excellent pace to get away from another defender and slid a good finish past goalkeeper Tim Brown for his eighth goal of the season at this level.
Both sides went close to scoring again before the interval. First Dragomir contrived to turn Yassin Fortune’s cross well over the bar from close range, before Da Graca cleared Oscar Borg’s chip off the line. Without goal-line technology, it is impossible to know whether the ball had already crossed the line before it was cleared.
Just after the restart Arsenal, were level and no surprises that it was Nketiah who was on target again. Willock produced a fine jinking run on the edge of the West Ham area before his shot was kept out by Brown but Nketiah was on the loose ball in a flash to prod in and equalise.
Grady Diangana shot wide when well-placed for West Ham and schoolboy substitute Nathan Tormey has a shot saved for Arsenal on his under-18 debut as both sides looked for a winner, bit it was to be the Hammers who had the best chance to win it in injury time, as Huddart somehow kept out Diangana’s point-blank header.
This result moves Arsenal into fifth in the table, having played one less game than three of the teams above them. Next up for the under-18ss is a home game against West Brom in the FA Youth Cup before returning to league action against Fulham.
