Arsene Wenger hopes Arsenal's young stars will learn from crushing Chelsea defeat

1/14
Vaishali Bhardwaj23 July 2017

Arsene Wenger is hopeful his younger Arsenal players will have benefited from playing against Chelsea on Saturday - even though they were beaten 3-0 in Beijing.

While Chelsea boss Antonio Conte opted to field his strongest side for the friendly clash, Wenger played an XI comprising regular first-team players and youngers ones, including Cohen Bramall and Ainsley Maitland-Niles.

But Wenger was not disheartened about the result, and insisted the experience of going head-to-head with the Premier League champions will have taught his younger squad members much about the top-flight game.

"I played some boys with a lack of experience in unusual positions to see how they can cope with it," Wenger told Arsenal Player. "Chelsea went for a regular team from the start on and I had a mix in one half and in the second half. We paid a little bit for it, but despite that, it was not all negative.

"We had some very good moments in the game as well, but we couldn’t score. Overall, I think there were lots of positives in the game. We lacked a bit of experience in decisive positions.

"They [the younger players] learned that every ball at that level is important. You cannot be at 95 per cent in these kind of games.

"You have to be completely 100 per cent committed and they paid for every mistake. The pace of the game was much higher than they are used to. They will go home with plenty of things to think about and hopefully they will learn quickly from it.

"As well, I must say there were a lot of positive from some young players. They have shown personality, quality and that they have a good chance at that level."

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Sign up you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy notice .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT