Petty: This Experience Will Benefit City's Youngsters

- Leicester City's Development Squad were beaten 3-0 at Arsenal on Friday
- After their final Premier League 2 fixture of the 2018/19 season, City sit in eighth
- Ben Petty says the Club's youngsters can take a lot from the experience 
- The Foxes head to Hong Kong for the HKFC Citi Soccer Sevens next month

City suffered a 3-0 defeat by the Gunners on their final Premier League 2 Division 1 outing of the season, with Charlie Gilmour, Tyreece John-Jules and Bukayo Saka finding the net.

However, those goals came in the opening nine minutes in north London, and, while Petty admits Leicester were ‘too open’ early on, he was pleased with their response.

“Apart from the first 10 minutes, I thought we did fine at times,” Petty told LCFC TV at full-time. “We had a game plan to come here and try and stifle them a little bit.

“We spoke with the players before the game about being more compact and narrow against Arsenal and letting them play on the outside.

“I felt in the first 10 minutes, we weren’t there, we didn’t get close enough and we didn’t stop them playing through the lines.

“The lads have shown character after nine minutes, keeping a clean sheet for the rest of the game, because obviously after the last game against Liverpool, their confidence is a bit frail.

“They showed some character tonight and we just discussed that in there. We’ve got some young players in that dressing room and they’ll be better for it.”

Over previous seasons, the Club’s Development Squad has produced the likes of Ben Chilwell, Hamza Choudhury and Harvey Barnes for the first team – and Petty hopes that can continue.

He added: “We were a young side tonight and we brought two lads on, under 17-years-old, so it shows that we’re developing the players, but obviously we’ve got to start better than we did.

“Although our league position isn’t as strong as it was last season, I think you’ve seen the likes of Harvey and Hamza come from the Under-23s group.

“You’ve seen lads out on loan, we’ve got three or four out on loan [Daniel Iversen, George Thomas, Darnell Johnson, Josh Knight, Elliott Moore], and that team out there tonight... it’s the future.

“It’s time for us to start working hard with them now and having that two-year cycle with them, trying to get them to where they need to be.”