Youth got to be kidding?

We are all still hurting after Thursday's shambolic performance. The season showed signs of promised, yet faltered towards the end. Many of us as Gooners are saying things which we do mean, supplemented by things which we do not mean with regard to our manager and players. A common solution posed on these forums to combat our uninspiring football, lack of passion and perceived lack of money to spend in the transfer market appears to be to give youth much more of a chance in our first team.

I understand the theories behind it: At least youngsters will show hunger; young players will be prepared to take risks; we have youngsters who are being courted by other teams; England has some of the best young talent in Europe; look at what Dortmund and Ajax have done with young talent both locally produced and imported; it can't be any worse than it is now! the last thought is a fallacy but let's go with it anyway!

My questions are, would you be happy to see youth being given more of a chance next year? Where do you see our potential short and long-term stars amongst our academy? Who within the current set of young player do you wish to see knocking on the first team door next year and why? And would you be happy to spend a year (or 2) building?

Youth is subjective, so I'm going to suggest players under the age of 23 without a huge profile so not your Mbappe, Sancho and Dembele' of this world.

 

Did you make a thread just to use that pun?

 

It took me longer to think of the title than to think of an opening post!!!!

 

Personally, I do not want to see Arsenal turn into a youth project as this isn't what we were promised after the move from Highbury to the Emirates. Even a blend between youth and experience needs to be balanced. We are not a feeder club like Dortmund or Ajax and we play in the world's most competitive league.

There was a reason why Jadon Sancho wasn't starting at Manchester City and it isn't ability. It is because for the level at which City wish to operate, they are not ready to give youth more than the odd game. This explains why Foden's appearances are sporadic (he'll make it at city by the way) and the sold Diaz, who now starts at an out of sorts Madrid. Even Ajax mix youth with experience - their academy is arguably the world's best and these are not your average teenagers. Plus, they are led by Daley Blind. This team has largely gone through the Ajax system, so it is no surprise that they look like they have complete chemistry on the pitch.

This is a question - are our youth teams even successful? I know they used to be in the Lupoli and Bendtner days, but I'm yet to be convinced on the level of our youngsters. An eye test make Smith-Rowe, Nelson and Nketiah about premier league ready in my eyes. Ghendouzi is definitely ready to play a squad role and has shown that this season. Maitland Niles the same.

Our weakness is the defence and personally I do not want to build our defence around an under 23 - we are too shaky!! Would I take a DeLigt? Yes but he is the exception rather than the rule. Konate looks good, but paired with Mustafi or Sokratis is surely not the environment to be tested in the worlds toughest league and I do not know the level of any of our youth cbs. I'd love to see young full backs come in though. There will be a theme here for positions away from the spine of a team. Bellerin I think is excellent and only needs an understudy. M-N has done his best, but it's unlikely that he would become a reliable alternative; we have tried with Debuchy and Lichtsteiner to have an experience alternative and for different reasons neither has worked. Ideally we need to bring in pacey, exciting, young full backs with ability in the final third. These do not have to be expensive. In an ideal world it would be Wan Bisaka and Gaya/Sessegnon - I'd happily buy two cheap, young, prospects n the full back position though.

Central midfield is not a play ground and I do not want to see us experiment here. Again Ajax is the exception rather than the rule. Ghendouzi is talented but can not control a game like DeJong or a young Cesc, nor should he be expected to. Strangely most of our best talent can occupy a midfield role in the three namely: Bielik, Ghendouzi, M-N, Willock, Smith-Rowe and Nelson. I DO NOT WANT TO EXPERIMENT IN THIS AREA! You can also add Iwobi to this mix possibly as he is only 23. Funnily enough I'd make Iwobi a starter next year as a CAM. Get his energy and love for the shirt in the engine room. We know his end product is lacking, so take him out of the attack. I think he's ready to step up. With the rest - you can't mess around in the spine of a team and we need experience, so I'd give Ghendouzi a similar profile to last year, maybe Maitland-Niles more minute, but we need to bring in experience and leadership. Your Willocks, Bieliks, Smith-Rowes need to be loaned in my opinion to European clubs or lower premier league clubs. Nelson is a forward.

Okay the forward line! This should be an area of excitement but it has been so bland at times this year. I'm ready to sacrifice Özil and Mkhi magic (their spells have expired) and promote youth here. Your Sancho', Mbappe, Dembele etc are special talents and we don't have special, but we do have exciting. Saka, Nelson, Martinelli, Nketiah all are pacey and direct and I love it. Striker is the one position where we have experience and class in abundance. I would like to see a youngster given a chance in the attacking positions. Infact both of Nelson and Nketiah being on the bench a lot. Yes we would need to replace Mkhi and Özil with somebody seasoned but I'm happy for one of their and Welbecks places to go to a youngster.

In essence to answer the questions:

would you be happy to see youth being given more of a chance next year? Yes but not in the spine of the team,

Where do you see our potential short and long-term stars amongst our academy? Iwobi needs a chance in CM, Ghendouzi is probably a year or 2 away but can start some games. These are short term solutions, who could potentially be long term answers. Long-term I have faith in Smith-Rowe, Nketiah and Nelson to be starters here.

Who within the current set of young player do you wish to see knocking on the first team door next year and why? Answered above.

And would you be happy to spend a year (or 2) building? Yes. Play youth in the fun positions and build a solid spine with whatever money we have.

Long post, but it's half-term and I've got time!

 

I'm very pro-youth. But on the bench.

We need a solid Arsenal first team but the first changes should be the youngsters, and not guys like El nenny

 

promote and add few more from the outside.
play them in ALL cup games. First 11 concentrate on PL, with extra rest from cup games

 

With the austerity measures at the club, I don't see a choice except blood a few youngsters and hope they turn out good.

 

Do you think that we have any under 23s ready to make an impact? City did it with Sane and Sterling albeit for big fees, Liverpool have done it Alexander-Arnold, United with Rashford, Chelsea were just giving Odoi his shot and Sp**s with Alli and Dier.

 

You can always mix between youth and experience you give a chance to youth player who ready to make impact we have many Willock ESR Nelson and then you buy good players who are not in their late 20's and in big wages that will help us to build and invest smartly i think that Edu Raul Venai aiming for.

 

Signings like Sokratis, Lictsteiner and Ryan Frasers. Instant impact, steady players.

 

you give a chance to players are ready to make impact we got those in ESR Willock and Nelson they show what they capable of.

 

Lets be honest here ,

How many of the current youth crop will actually progress into real quality prem league players or if we are lucky enough world class??

Maybe 1 or even 2 the rest will probably slide into the lower level league teams. I remember when everyone was saying David Bentley is the next Bergkamp ,where is Bentley now??? Stories like this are endless so the reality is with youth its only ever likely to be one or two players . Thats unless we are happy being the new West Ham.

So we are back to bringing in players to match our youth with a supposed 40 million budget . Now think of that 40 million which should help us compete with Wolves or leicester and the possibility of bringing in inexperienced youth players (most of which won't cut the mustard).

It doesn't look good to me even if we tear this squad apart to free money for transfers and mix it with youth. This club has slowly season by season with drawn its 'big club status'.

Banter club , football fans now basically say that's it for Arsenal they are gone , won't see them doing much for years .

And the reason for this is because of the rot that currently reaks around the corridors of Arsenal , from top to bottom .

It will be nice to see some home grown players but unless things change we as a club will be the next west ham simples as that

 

I still don't believe people don't understand "youth project".

It's not about selling all the senior players and play u23 team, it's about having a good mixture of talented youth players and quality more experienced senior players. If you look at Ajax, they have exactly that: de Jong, van de beek and de ligt, combined with more experienced players like Tadic, Schone and Blind.

Nobody is saying we should sell Auba/Laca and play Nketiah, or swap Xhaka with Joe Willock, but we should change our approach and replace some of our squad players like Mkhi, Elneny, Kola, Welbz, Mustafi and Lich with academy players or younger players that we buy for cheap. It would be massive save of resources that we badly miss when going for quality players, and none of the mentioned squad players adds anything positive to our game and results.

Can anyone explain to me what would be the difference if we were playing all season with ESR/Nketiah instead of Mkhi? We would save money on wages, results would probably not change but we would have complete player for next year who would also be worth 30m+.
Same goes for Joe Willock.

I didn't expect something self explanatory concept like this needs it's own thread

 

I promise you there are many more academies in the world where we can take youth players from, but this academy group is very promising. It's easier to just write comments about something you clearly have no knowledge about than actually invest some time to see what they are

 

My friend, you have either misunderstood the topic, misread the topic or are being purposefully combative. Nowhere have I suggested that it was impossible to have a blend of youth and experience. I'm simply asking if you (or any of the other of thousands of posters)believe that our current crop of youngsters are ready to contribute to the first team next year.

This thread is also topical as news emerges of an alleged small transfer budget, so we may need to find internal solutions to bulking out our squad.

 

I think Rob Holding, Smith-Rowe, Ghendouzi and Nelson will represent their countries for sure. All will be good premier league players at the very least I reckon.

 

We've gone down that route before and accomplished **** all with it. So no, i wouldn't back.

 

I'm not referring to topic, I see that negativity towards younger players all over the forum, and this thread will be just the same. People on here behave like we have 300m every summer, they want experienced players so when we buy Mustafi and Xhaka they are disappointed. But the budget we have is only enough for that kind of players.
Didn't want to have a go at you, I'm just tired of everything we are currently doing and fans supporting this system instead of welcoming it.

The system that we currently have is the reason why we have small budget and youth players would help us dealing with that, but in a couple of years we would be able to invest big when we develop few young players.

 

Really and how many players have we had nabbed from us over the last few years . We are one of the clubs in the world where we now feed bigger clubs.

In other words more crap from you on this forum

 

I don't know if anyone came across it, but The Economist magazine wrote an article a couple of weeks ago about the top Premier League clubs. The premise was that the recently successful clubs(City, Sp**s, Liverpool) have favoured youth over the less successful clubs (Arsenal, United, Chelsea). They also identified that those three successful clubs weren't buying their players from 'elite' teams . It's a really strong argument and one I hope the management team can learn from. Forget about these high priced players from top teams. It's a mugs game.

We should promote the youth players who are good enough and supplement it with additions from the lesser teams where we need to