Arsenal coach Porter shares delight with UYL victory over Shakhtar Donetsk

Shakhtar Donetsk emerged victorious against the Gunners' young team, with Valentyn Halonskyi scoring the winning goal for the visiting side.

“I think it was a brilliant game for advertising what this competition gives us for development,” Porter told club media post-game. 

“We played a really resilient and resolute team. When I look back on it, we had 70 percent of the ball today from the stats that I’ve just seen. They had one shot on goal and scored from it, which was poor from us in how we defended it. Then we spent the majority of the game trying to break them down. I feel like, for us, we need to be better in that situation.

“We need to find more solutions, be more dynamic in our attacking play, but I couldn’t fault the players’ attitude or intent today. They gave it everything. That was the challenge. In this competition before, last year when we went behind, we felt that maybe we didn’t go to the end as much as we could. I thought they did that today.

“We do plenty of work against back fives in our games programme. I think the dynamism is part of relationships. This completion is difficult for us in the sense that we have an 18s, a 21s, a 16s and a 17s of course. You saw today players from across all of those age groups, including those coming from the first team.

“So it’s difficult in terms of how we get the relationships and players linking together, knowing each others games. We do as much as we can with that with the time we have. It’s something we currently do, but it’s difficult to do and a real challenge, particularly when you go behind and the team doesn’t have to come out as much.”