“It was a real team effort. When you come into these games, there’s always some apprehension — you know it’s about how you deal with it on the night, how you perform. Overall, I think you’d have to say we deserved the result and the victory. Like any tournament, you’ve got to take each game as it comes and there’ll be different challenges within them. We’ve obviously overcome that tonight.
“We have a lot of respect for Chelsea as an Academy. We know they have some really good individuals and a good squad. We’ve had a couple of really good games with them of late. When you get to this stage, there’s gonna be different questions posed of the group but we rose to that.”
‘SPECIAL MEMORIES’
“Every youth player obviously remembers their Youth Cup experiences,” Lawrence continued.
“We can’t have it as the only benchmark for the players in terms of their youth team journey but it can give the players some special memories. Knowing it was Arsenal away in the next round — hopefully to be played at the Emirates — was a nice carrot for us today. Again, that’ll be something we’ll look forward to and something for the boys to remember, so obviously nice to get into that next round.”
Indeed, United will now face Arsenal in the FA Youth Cup quarter-final, with fixture details — including the venue — still to be confirmed.
