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‘I’m full of confidence right now’

Ainsley Maitland-Niles enjoyed his first home start for Arsenal in Tuesday night's 2-0 EFL Cup victory over Reading.

After the game, the teenager spoke to Arsenal Player:   

on how much he enjoyed it…
I really enjoyed myself out there tonight. It was good to play at the Emirates in front of 60,000 people and showing the club what I can do.
 
on how it was to play alongside an experienced international like Mohamed Elneny…
I was nervous at first, but I just got on with the game and tried to do what I do best.
 
on his own performance…
Everyone wants to score, so I tried a few times in the first half. I wasn’t too far off with some of them, some of them were a bit wayward. I’m just full of confidence right now an I’m trying to push on to cement a first team place.
 
on his best position…
I prefer centre mid, but of course I’ll do a job out wide.
 
on receiving praise from Arsene Wenger…
It just gives you a lot of confidence and you just need to take it into the games and keep speaking to him and seeing where you need to improve on. So that’s what I try to do.
 
on what the boss said to him after his loan spell…
It was difficult [at Ipswich] but at the same time it gave me a lot of experience and showed me how different men’s football is from playing with a bunch of kids. But it’s like when you come back from those sort of experiences, you learn a lot and you’ve just got to take it into the season ahead of you.
 
on whether Wembley is in his mind at all…
Yeah, it is, it is. Hopefully we can get into the next rounds before Wembley, but yeah, the boys are in good shape and we’re back to winning ways so let’s just carry on.
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