The 14 minutes Ethan Nwaneri played at West Ham in February, with Arsenal 5-0 ahead when he entered the field, were the only Premier League, FA Cup or Champions League minutes played by any player under 21 at Arsenal last season. Charles Sagoe Jnr played for 67 minutes in the Carabao Cup tie at Brentford in September.
Domestic cups are usually the ideal laboratory to spawn budding talent but Arsenal were slightly hamstrung by being drawn exclusively against Premier League clubs in the FA and League Cups last season. It does feel strange to observe the small number of minutes played by teenagers given that Arsenal is one of the youngest teams in the league.
However, most of the first-team players are bunched in the 23-26 age category. The story of the imminent departure of Armario Cozier-Duberry as well as speculation around Chido Obi-Martin’s future has led many supporters to question whether Arsenal have an issue integrating academy talent.
I have to say I do not share this anxiety at all, not at this stage anyway. I think the biggest difficulty Arsenal face in integrating young talent is that they accumulated 89 Premier League points last season and it still wasn’t enough to win the league. The margin for error is non-existent.
Arsenal don’t have the points to sacrifice and for a young player to be good enough to get into a team amassing that sort of points total, they essentially have to be a generational talent. When Arsenal were finishing 8th and playing Europa League football, it was easier to assimilate the likes of Nketiah, Nelson (both of whom are now surely surplus to requirements), Maitland-Niles and Willock.
When those players were integrated into the squad, Arsenal had six Europa League group games to play with and they were essentially an upper mid table team. Manchester United have been able to blood Garnacho, Mainoo and Hojlund because they are competing for spots with the likes of Antony, Anthony Martial and Sofyan Amrabat.
Last season,…
Source link : https://arseblog.com/2024/06/stale-end/
Author : Tim Stillman
Publish date : 2024-06-27 12:00:08
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