I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Since Arteta came in and the stakes have been raised every year, has it become too risky to let Academy players. I see us linked with so many young stars from other clubs. I always think to Hale End and wonder why none of the budding talents can’t get a chance to be in our depth. We have one of the best Academies in Europe and I feel like potential stars are being wasted in the academy or being put on strings of loans. Is that the new modern game or are our young talents not good enough?
It’s one of the downfalls of success, when we were chilling in 7th, we had the time to play youngsters and let them develop. Now we don’t, even one of the more senior youngsters like ESR isn’t being given that much minutes. In previous seasons, I don’t think we buy Havertz and we see if ESR can do it. We’re at a stage though where we need to be making CL consistently and also competing for titles/trophies to keep the top tier players like Jesus/Saka/Saliba.
This is a certain degree that we need to strike while the iron is hot too. Under Wenger, it always felt like we were that one or two players short of a proper push. Under Arteta we’re mostly talking about upgrading players rather than just not having them to begin with.
I do love watching the young players come through and break into the first team, problem is our squad is pretty big. So we need to give League Cup or FA cup minutes to the likes of ESR/Vieira/Jorginho too. There’s just not much room for a promising youngster to be given a run out, when senior players are struggling for minutes.