Mehmet Ali was disappointed but highlighted the positives in our 3-2 defeat away to Manchester City under-21s on Saturday.
We were knocked out of the Premier League 2 play-off quarter-finals in extra-time.
Reflecting on the match, Mehmet said: “I don't feel great, to be honest. I think that's football. But it's my job to pick up my players, or our players. It was a real tough way to lose the game. But it's my job, like I said, to pick up these boys because they're devastated in there.
"And they gave absolutely everything. And in terms of our game plan and how we played against Man City, not many teams come here and do what we did and go 2-0 up. And even at 2-0, we felt really, really good.
"But to give away the goals that we did was really disappointing. And it's something that the players will have to learn from. But like I said, we don't feel good at all.
"But it's my job to pick these boys up and understand that they need to find a way to keep pushing to have careers in this industry.
"I think there's so many positives. If you look at some of our older and our senior players in the group, huge respect and credit to them for what they've done all season, because they're not where they want to be. They want to be playing men's football and that's not worked out for whatever reasons.
"But I think what they've done all year has been amazing. And then if you look at some of our younger players to perform on this stage with the amount of scholars that we had on the pitch, it was credit to Arsenal Academy and credit to our players. And yes, they need to learn from today, take the positives, but also the negatives have to burn.
"Because at Arsenal, we need to find a way of being serial winners and winning things and competing. And when you have games like this coming out on top, and we didn't do that tonight. So, we need to learn from that.
"First and foremost, these boys are not done yet, even though our games programme is done now, because we haven't reached the semi-finals. Our job is to keep training, to support the first team like we have done all year, because there's important games still to play.
"And I know what my players are like and the culture we have in the academy, and we will do that really well. And then from that, we need to make sure that we're giving opportunities to younger players to experience 21s football early and find a way of surviving in it and then thriving in it. And that's our job as a group of staff and also responsibility on the players to understand that you're at Arsenal Academy.
"And that comes with a healthy pressure to go and perform. And it's a challenge that we look forward to."
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