McCarthy says men's U21s will have learned a lot from Arsenal draw

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The Gunners scored a late equaliser in Monday's Premier League 2 game.

2026-09-01T09:30+01:00

Jason McCarthy believes his players will have learned a lot after letting a slip lead against Arsenal. 📷Simon Roe.

Albion men’s U21s coach Jason McCarthy was disappointed that his side could not hold out for a first victory of the season in Premier League 2 after Arsenal scored a late goal to secure a 2-2 at the American Express Elite Performance Centre on Monday.

But he believes that the match will provide a good learning experience for his young players.

Albion came from 1-0 down to lead 2-1 after 62 minutes thanks to goals from Younes Ibrahim and half-time substitute Bailey Palmer. But Arsenal’s own sub, Evan Mooney, tied the scores in the 88th minute.

“I thought we played really well,” McCarthy said. “The data tells me, and my eye tells me, that we were the better team against a very strong Arsenal side. So I think we can be really pleased about that.

“We probably allowed one too many transitions in the game, and that's a strength of theirs. That meant that after 75 minutes we started to fatigue, and they came into the game.

Bailey Palmer came off the bench to equalise against Arsenal. 📷Paul Hazlewood

“We ended up with a very young back five, but that was a really good experience for them, and a great test and a good marker for us to see where we're at. Arsenal will be up there at the end of the season, but hopefully we will too.”

The team reacted well to going behind and kept the momentum going after half time. “I thought we had really good solutions for their press in the game,” he added. “We were very good at finding the spare man, and then changing the tempo.”

A feature of Albion’s best spell was how regularly they were able to release left-back Sean Keogh down the wing in the same way that the first team have deployed Maxim De Cuyper in recent weeks.

“It's the wonderful thing about our club,” Jason said. “There's alignment running from the first team right the way through to the younger age groups in the academy. So you're right, you can see, hopefully, through our first team into our group, some similar principles and even similar profiles of players that allow us to have alignment.”