'I thought it was a bit of a grind'

Terry Burton spoke to Arsenal.com after the NextGen Series defeat to Sporting Lisbon. Below is a transcript of the interview:

on playing a third-place play off…
Before you even step foot on the pitch you know it will be difficult. But it was an opportunity for some of the guys who haven't played much to show what they could do. I thought it was a bit of a grind - the first half was very much like that. We got the goal from a mistake by them and there were a lot of mistakes on the pitch. There wasn't much football played.

on conceding twice in the second half…
At 1-1 we made several changes, and then the referee gave a mysterious penalty - I don't think he wanted extra-time and penalties, he had another game to go to! Then they got a bit fortunate with the third goal.

on Sporting Lisbon…
They were unfortunate not to be in the final. Credit to Aston Villa, who worked extremely hard against them in the semi-final, but Sporting probably had enough chances to seen themselves through.

on who has impressed…
The two centre backs [Sead Hajrovic and Isaac Hayden] have been very solid for us over the course of the tournament, let alone these two games. They have really shown some good qualities.

on what you can learn from the match…
You can take stuff, we will review the game. I think the way they pressed, they do that really well when you have your back to play and make it really hard for you, and you have to be able to bounce off other players. Your support positions have to be good, but we just ran out of tempo to our game today.

on the changed team…
We lost people like Serge [Gnabry] who is obviously one of the key players for us, he has that ability to go past people and quicken the tempo up. We don't have too many others who have the same qualities. When he is not there, you do tend to miss it.

on the tournament as a whole…
It has been very good. They just need to look at the standard of the pitches, because we have had two or three that have not been as good, but the quality of the opposition has been good. They have done extremely well behind the scenes, the people who make sure your experience is as good as you want it to be. I hope they continue to run the competition.