Jack Wilshere relishing leading second Arsenal bid for FA Youth Cup glory

Jack Wilshere is relishing replicating Arsenal's first-team success in the FA Youth Cup.

The 31-year-old former Arsenal midfielder turned youth team coach guided the club's U18 side into a semi-final against Manchester City in the competition he won as a player in 2009.

With Mikel Arteta's senior side in pole position to clinch a first Premier League title since 2003/04, Wilshere hopes his players can draw inspiration from their first-team counterparts, particularly their ability to handle the pressure of the title race.

"It's inspiring," Wilshere told Sky Sports, "but it puts us under a bit of pressure, which I say to the boys. If the first team keep doing raising the bar, we have to go with them otherwise that gap becomes too big. So it's challenging."

Wilshere continued: "When I was back last year, people would ask me what it was like being back at Arsenal and it's completely different. It's like a different place and they would say it's results dependent.

"But what Mikel, Edu and people around the club have done have filtered that down through the women's team, through the academy and now it's at our level to feed it down to the younger age groups.

"That's how a successful club is run, and you can see that with the first team and that's our job to support the first team and give them the next Bukayo [Saka] and the next Emile [Smith Rowe]. We have to keep raising the level as well."

Arteta's revival of Arsenal has not been confined to first-team affairs.

The philosophy, the culture of the football club has been changed, trickling from the top down throughout the age groups, with Wilshere joining his players in looking upwards for guidance at the early stages of his transition to coaching.

"I always thought about being a coach," he added. "But coming back [to Arsenal], seeing Mikel and his staff, the way they coach, the detail they go into, it inspired me.

"Mikel's brilliant, especially last year when I was deciding whether to go back to Denmark to play or stop and start coaching.

"Mikel hasn't got much experience as a coach when you think about it, but his detail and his level of thinking… when he says something to you, he's right and you know that straight away. He's feeling you and knows what you're feeling.

"That's a special part of a character when he knows what someone is feeling and tries to help them. You see he does it with the players

"He has great advice and he helped me last year, told me to go and see if I could do it and there would always be a place here for me. I did that and then came back.

"To come back and be in this role and be around these people like Mikel, Albert Stuivenberg, Steve Round, but also in the academy as well, we have some great coaches. For me to be around that every day, for my learning, I'm in the best place."

Arsenal's 2008/09 FA Youth Cup campaign provided Wilshere, one of the most-gifted English players of his generation, with the springboard to launch his playing career.

Fourteen years on, the recently-retired former international returns to the competition looking to fuel his managerial aspirations, and the similarities don't end there.

Arsenal's class of 2009 famously overcame Manchester City in the semi-finals - a task they replicate this week - and the memories remain as vivid to Wilshere now as they did back then.

"I've got fond memories that will last forever," he said. "When you leave school and come up to a football club, it feels like the start of your journey and it is, you're trying to be a professional footballer and fight for the contracts and you're in every day.

"But for me, those moments when you play in stadiums and in the Youth Cup, those are the moment where it starts feeling real. You think 'we're in a game, this isn't U16s, we have to win this. If you want to survive in this competition, we have to find a way to win this'.

"My group back then were a really good team, we had some quality individuals, but in certain games, we found a way to win and this group now has that. It gives me hope. We have to be better than the previous two rounds, but when you have that spirit and fire, you always have a chance."

As for what fans turning up to the Emirates Stadium of Tuesday night can expect from Wilshere's team? He hopes a performance the swashbuckling first team would be proud of.

"I hope the fans see a team that plays with the handbrake off, plays at a tempo, makes it difficult for City," he added.

"At the minute, we're talking to the boys about how important both boxes are, defend our box and being ruthless in the opposition box. Hopefully we can see some improvement on that.

"I want the fans to see what they see in the first team - that passion and pride. Bring that, bring the fans with you, show your energy, play forward, run forward. Against City, you have to defend the pocket spaces, defend behind, defend well."