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Hayden - It will take time to recover

Isaac in action during the FA Youth Cup
Isaac in action during the FA Youth Cup

Isaac Hayden acknowledges that it will take Arsenal’s players time to recover from Monday night’s FA Youth Cup defeat by Everton.

The young Gunners bowed out at the fifth-round stage after losing 4-2 at Underhill, despite being given an early lead by striker Chuba Akpom.

"With this age group, not only the players, but the coaches and staff thought we’d do really well, so it’s such a big blow to go out now"

Isaac Hayden

While the cup run did bring plenty of positives, captain Hayden was disappointed that Arsenal’s talented side could not go further.

“It will take a while to get over this,” he told Arsenal.com. “With this age group, not only the players, but the coaches and staff thought we’d do really well, so it’s such a big blow to go out now.

“The last game against Fulham was a very good game for us. We wanted to get as far as possible and emulate Jack Wilshere’s team [that won the Youth Cup in 2009]. It wasn’t meant to be but hopefully we’ll carry on developing into good players in the future.

“It was a good first goal and we were looking to push on from there. We gave away a cheap free kick, didn’t mark in the box properly. Then in the second half, we were unlucky with the third goal and the fourth was a real sucker punch when we were trying to get back into the game.

“We’re really disappointed. We thought we could go quite far this year. We’ve got a fantastic team and great spirit but it wasn’t meant to be.

“There’s a game on Saturday for the under-21s and football is about how you react from mistakes and bad games and take that into the future. We want to learn from today. There’s a lot to learn and hopefully we can push on into further games in the future.”