Vlad Dragomir says he’s working hard for first-team opportunities, after scoring his first goal for the u23s on Monday.

The 18-year-old attacking-midfielder opened his account with the u23s with a goal in Monday’s win over Sunderland, and told Arsenal.com he happy he was to make the step up and finally register for the reserve side.

“I was very happy for that, I was waiting for a long time this goal and I think I can get more in our next games.” Dragomir has appeared on the bench for the first-team against BATE Borisov, a little by surprise considering he’d played 90 minutes for the u23s just days previously.

When asked about being involved with the first-team again this week, the Romanian responded: “I’m working hard for that and I was very surprised to be in the first-team squad (against BATE Borisov). It’s something great. You can’t believe it, but you’re living a dream, something like this.”

I wouldn’t bet against Dragomir being in the squad again on Thursday, especially since Arsenal got the win against Borisov and secured their position at the top of the group. If things start to go south in the competition, I’d expect Wenger to send a more experienced bench to Köln.

But while things are going well, there’s little harm giving a few youngsters the chance to be involved with the senior side, in my opinion. It allows some regular first-team players to get a bit of a rest too.

Dragomir has made five appearances in the Premier League 2 for Arsenal u23s this season, and will be hoping his efforts for the reserves will lead to minutes with the senior side in the coming weeks.