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Our Inability to Develop Players

Aevi

Hale End FC
Moderator
A problem I don't think is getting enough attention is how little any of our players seem to improve in their time here. We sometimes have a tendency to look at some of our younger players and see them not as the players they are now but as the players they could become, yet they don't seem to follow that expected upwards trajectory.

Nelson has been in and out of the team and has stagnated since bursting into the scene at youth level. Xhaka and Mustafi still make the same silly mistakes they used to. Lacazette is scoring less than when he first got here. Bellerin isn't particularly better than when he broke through. Torreira started off promising and has tailed off. I could go on and on.

This obviously poses several problems. Beyond the fact that it means the team doesn't improve much year by year (and rather even depreciates in quality), it means that the value of these players is slowly dwindling because they're meanwhile getting older, so we're getting less money out of sales. Given the financial model of our club, that's pretty catastrophic.

There are likely many reasons for this: the rotation of managers over the past 3 years, the poor quality of our coaching staff, a bad "culture" in the club, misuse of players, too much/little rotation of players, maybe even our poor interpretation of these players' abilities in the first place. But we aren't going to get far if we don't find a way to fix this, because new signings aren't going to do us much good if we can't improve some of the pieces we already have in the first place. We can't buy a whole new team.

What are your thoughts?
 

Country: Iceland
The culture needs to change.

Our leaders are Auba and Laca, two players when you watch training videos you always seem them goofing and messing around. Özil who barely shows up anymore. Defenders that make mistake every game. Leaders in defense that make mistakes, give constantly away penalties, get red cards, and then get a new contract.

It's just telling. Players don't have to fear anything. They have the weapons, they just threaten to run their contracts down. It has created this laid back culture where you don't see maximum effort anymore.

It was a perfect opportunity to make an example of Luiz. Someone nobody at Arsenal should care about. After the City game we should have been "now this is how you gonna play", well then goodbye. But instead, we gave him a new contract.

I fear that there are a lot of bad things left to happen before we start moving on and change the culture. Arteta has been all words about this so far but the actions are not convincing me.
 

UpTheGunnerz

Vrei sa pleci dar una una iei

Player:Elneny
The culture needs to change.

Our leaders are Auba and Laca, two players when you watch training videos you always seem them goofing and messing around. Özil who barely shows up anymore. Defenders that make mistake every game. Leaders in defense that make mistakes, give constantly away penalties, get red cards, and then get a new contract.

It's just telling. Players don't have to fear anything. They have the weapons, they just threaten to run their contracts down. It has created this laid back culture where you don't see maximum effort anymore.

It was a perfect opportunity to make an example of Luiz. Someone nobody at Arsenal should care about. After the City game we should have been "now this is how you gonna play", well then goodbye. But instead, we gave him a new contract.

I fear that there are a lot of bad things left to happen before we start moving on and change the culture. Arteta has been all words about this so far but the actions are not convincing me.

We usually dont see eye to eye, but very good post. Spot on.
 

Ash10

Chairman of the Bum Brigade
The culture needs to change.

Our leaders are Auba and Laca, two players when you watch training videos you always seem them goofing and messing around. Özil who barely shows up anymore. Defenders that make mistake every game. Leaders in defense that make mistakes, give constantly away penalties, get red cards, and then get a new contract.

It's just telling. Players don't have to fear anything. They have the weapons, they just threaten to run their contracts down. It has created this laid back culture where you don't see maximum effort anymore.

It was a perfect opportunity to make an example of Luiz. Someone nobody at Arsenal should care about. After the City game we should have been "now this is how you gonna play", well then goodbye. But instead, we gave him a new contract.

I fear that there are a lot of bad things left to happen before we start moving on and change the culture. Arteta has been all words about this so far but the actions are not convincing me.
Bang on the money, great post
 

MikelHadADream

Established Member
Trusted ⭐
A problem I don't think is getting enough attention is how little any of our players seem to improve in their time here. We sometimes have a tendency to look at some of our younger players and see them not as the players they are now but as the players they could become, yet they don't seem to follow that expected upwards trajectory.

Nelson has been in and out of the team and has stagnated since bursting into the scene at youth level. Xhaka and Mustafi still make the same silly mistakes they used to. Lacazette is scoring less than when he first got here. Bellerin isn't particularly better than when he broke through. Torreira started off promising and has tailed off. I could go on and on.

This obviously poses several problems. Beyond the fact that it means the team doesn't improve much year by year (and rather even depreciates in quality), it means that the value of these players is slowly dwindling because they're meanwhile getting older, so we're getting less money out of sales. Given the financial model of our club, that's pretty catastrophic.

There are likely many reasons for this: the rotation of managers over the past 3 years, the poor quality of our coaching staff, a bad "culture" in the club, misuse of players, too much/little rotation of players, maybe even our poor interpretation of these players' abilities in the first place. But we aren't going to get far if we don't find a way to fix this, because new signings aren't going to do us much good if we can't improve some of the pieces we already have in the first place. We can't buy a whole new team.

What are your thoughts?

It's not a case of us not developing them, it's just the players mentioned here are not very good and all have a very limited skill set for the respective positions.
 

Oxeki

Match Day Thread Merchant
Trusted ⭐

Country: Nigeria

Player:Saliba
Another aspect is our coaches seems to be incompetent. Scezeny was poverty while he was here, but goes to Roma and was keeping Allison on the bench FFS.

He even said he didn't improve here because of the piss poor coaching. Hopefully with the new shake up of back room staff, things will improve in that regard.

Another reason is that during his latter years here, Wenger became too trusting. He was always putting his arm around young players and shielding them which kind of created a culture of impunity because when you know that boss is always lenient with even when you feck up.

Then Emery happened, who is the worst coach to develop talent or improve players.

Hopefully Arteta will will change things for the better
 

Hunta

Established Member
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
Gnabry, Jeff, Bennacer, Malen.

All in the same youth side (Iwobi and Bellerin too) and we sold them all for nothing really. All four are either playing for elite clubs or linked with them. That’s why we can’t give up on the current group of youngsters, not yet anyway.

I remember watching that team in the UEFA tournament and they got knocked out by Barca, a certain Adama Traore destroyed us IIRC.
 

Garrincha

Wilf Zaha Aficionado
Trusted ⭐
Since Cole it has really been a bit sparse with academy players actually making it & being a regular here. Jack, Iwobi & now looks like Saka has a good chance? Maybe we as a fanbase just expect too much from these youth players in recent years.

This season has been the first I can remember where multiple youth players on 400/500/600 league minutes with really no business being in the team. Is that a good or bad thing for development I dont really know.
 

roz

Fake News Merchant
Gnabry, Jeff, Bennacer, Malen.

All in the same youth side (Iwobi and Bellerin too) and we sold them all for nothing really. All four are either playing for elite clubs or linked with them. That’s why we can’t give up on the current group of youngsters, not yet anyway.

I remember watching that team in the UEFA tournament and they got knocked out by Barca, a certain Adama Traore destroyed us IIRC.
Traore looked unreal that whole tournament. You could see he was going to make it. Mental how much he’s improved his build for a comparatively skinnyish guy
 

14Henry

Looking for receipts 👀
I made this very arguement regarding Saka and the contract issue.

Every single person argued that Saka was best staying at Arsenal.

However my view was it was actually better for his career to leave now. Go to a club that has some history of developing young players in the last 5-6 years. While being in a team that's usually quite successful and where the environment is more positive.

I mentioned the likes of Dortmund/Liverpool being 2 options. Here he will start maybe 20 games in all competitions with sub appearances and be in a much better atmosphere to improve.

My argument was that Arsenal dont develop players. Every player who comes to Arsenal or comes through at Arsenal goes backwards or stays at a mediocre level.

Why? The coaching isnt good enough. The environment doesnt allow young players to thrive as we are a sinking ship. And in general we just arent a well run club when it comes to young players. We pretend we are but we arent.

For us to improve we need to create a culture of youth development. That starts with signing players 28/29/30 for bit part roles that a 20 year old learning could do.

Everything about Arsenal is toxic and that is no place for a young player. It's the last place you would go.
 

FinnGooner

Established Member
Good post. As you say, it’s very complicated issue. You’d think the problem isn’t with the talent pool we are working with. I imagine we get a lot of raw talent in but where it goes wrong, hard to say. If you just take the youth development part, one thing in common with our (attacking) youngsters is that they are often quite quick and decent dribblers. This is of course good but too many times you see a player who has good natural/special skills and who is physically ready but ends up disappointing in terms of basic skills like passing reliability/range, first touch and general consistency. This is where the Spanish and German excel imo. No matter what the player’s natural strengths are, they make sure the basic skills are on a high level as well, at least usually this is the case.
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
Another aspect is our coaches seems to be incompetent. Scezeny was poverty while he was here, but goes to Roma and was keeping Allison on the bench FFS.

Woj was inconsistent here, not poverty...there were periods of time were he looked amazing.

Agree with the ****ty coaches though, we should have freshened up more during Arsène's time.
 

GeorgiaGunner

#FreeClaude
The culture needs to change.

Our leaders are Auba and Laca, two players when you watch training videos you always seem them goofing and messing around. Özil who barely shows up anymore. Defenders that make mistake every game. Leaders in defense that make mistakes, give constantly away penalties, get red cards, and then get a new contract.

It's just telling. Players don't have to fear anything. They have the weapons, they just threaten to run their contracts down. It has created this laid back culture where you don't see maximum effort anymore.

It was a perfect opportunity to make an example of Luiz. Someone nobody at Arsenal should care about. After the City game we should have been "now this is how you gonna play", well then goodbye. But instead, we gave him a new contract.

I fear that there are a lot of bad things left to happen before we start moving on and change the culture. Arteta has been all words about this so far but the actions are not convincing me.
Came here to write (a far less eloquent version of) this. Invincibles era guys were consummate professionals, obsessed with winning / bettering themselves, and competing against the best of the best. They held themselves and each other to the highest of standards. Current crop seem happy to collect nice salaries, live in London, and coast most of the time. We need some leaders with competitive spirit — guys who are PISSED when they or their teammates **** up. Getting a few rock-solid character guys in will be just as important as fixing midfield, CB, etc. And no, bring old and/or well-traveled (and likely available on a free) doesn’t automatically make you a leader.
 

MD3 Gunner

All Deals Off
It’s been a while since we’ve done something we had been famous for. Making unknown players to stars. Vieira, RVP, Cesc, Nasri, Toure, Cole, Anelka, Bould, Dixon, Smith, Ramsey, etc.. we don’t do that anymore. We don’t make stars like we used to
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
It’s been a while since we’ve done something we had been famous for. Making unknown players to stars. Vieira, RVP, Cesc, Nasri, Toure, Cole, Anelka, Bould, Dixon, Smith, Ramsey, etc.. we don’t do that anymore. We don’t make stars like we used to

Probably Wilshere and Szczesny were the last two...we kind of started of Gnabry, but in the end he succeeded in spite of us really :lol:
 

MD3 Gunner

All Deals Off
Probably Wilshere and Szczesny were the last two...we kind of started of Gnabry, but in the end he succeeded in spite of us really :lol:
I like Wilshere but honestly if he is good as we thought he was then surely other clubs in world football would’ve wanted him on a free apart from West Ham ?
 

RunTheTrap

Kai Havertz Offense League
I think our inability to develop players well is because we rarely map out a plan for their time here at Arsenal. How many times have we seen a plucky young kid come into the team and we mess them around by playing them in positions they have no business in or our medical team kills them?

Take for example The Ox, he was a highly rated winger from Southampton's academy, he was fast, powerful, agile, had a good shot on him and worked hard but most importantly he saw himself as a central midfielder. So what do we do? Well we play him in every position we can because we have injuries thinking it doesn't matter as long as he gets minutes. It heavily matters. Same thing you're seeing with AMN. He sees himself as a midfielder, his first ever appearance for Arsenal was in midfield against Galatasray. He's a youth England international that has won the World Cup playing in midfield. People forget that AMN was a highly rated youth international but you wouldn't think that because at the age of 22 he doesn't really have a position.

I chose AMN and The Ox because they're probably the most maligned players we have and I think Arsenal fans treat them poorly as if it were their fault they aren't good as we expected them to be. When in reality, Arsenal hampered their development by not putting them everywhere they could get away with. I am totally against the use of young players as utility men, I think its alright if you're experienced like Milner or Ray Parlour but for a young player, having a suitable role and guidance in that role will do you well in the long run.
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
I like Wilshere but honestly if he is good as we thought he was then surely other clubs in world football would’ve wanted him on a free apart from West Ham ?

He was a cripple when he left us unfortunately, surprised West Ham even wanted him when he left us, as his body couldn't be trusted like Diaby's...City wanted him in 2011.
 

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