Aaropn Ramsey gets a new job, Monga to Arsenal, England flutter in the WC

By Tony Attwood

So it now looks as if Bukayo Saka is going to play in the final England qualifier in order to try and get the country out of its hole.  The WC table isn’t very exciting but just in case your newspaper got fluttered away in the breeze here it is.

So it is England against Panama on 27 June.  And just in case you wanted to know about this country, Santa María de la Antigua, is the  Patron Saint of Panama, the capital of Panama is Panama City and its population is about 4 million, having risen from around 400,000 in the last 100 years. England’s population is about 60 million.  So on that basis, we ought to have a better team.

Meanwhile, back in the real world of club football, as expected, Arsenal’s initial bid for Leicester’s 16-year-old Jeremy Monga was rejected.  I am not at all sure why clubs go through this business of putting in a lower bid, having it rejected and then upping the bid until they find a mutual position – surely the transfer directors from each side could simply sit down and sort it out in one go, but it seems not.   But it seems he is coming our way.

As a youngster, he is of course a bit of a risk – one never knows if 15 and 16 year olds will settle down to regular hard work having been head and shoulders above every other player in school and county teams, but thie application is what clubs look for as much as the natural talent when signing players who are still at school.    Personality and dedication are as important as speed and ability with the ball.

He is the second youngest player ever to get onto the pitch in the Premier League, – the only one to have made it at a younger age is Ethan Nwaneri, and it could be that the pair become teammates in the very near future.  Nwaneri has apparently signed a contract that keeps him at Arsenal until 2030, which shows how Arsenal’s vision for the future is panning out.

Anyway, the revised Monga contract is due to be signed on his 17th birthday on 10 July, which means he can be part of the summer training camp and play in some training games, and as a result of that, it will be decided if he is to go out on loan or pick up occasional minutes as a sub at Arsenal.    In this regard, much also depends on how the rest of the transfer window goes in terms of purchases and sales.   Being under 21 of course Monga will not be counted in the “25” for some years to come.

He has, however, already played for Leicester (although that might not be too much of a recommendation given their recent football, regulatory and financial decline).  They will be in the third tier next season – although Monga played for them as a 15-year-old as Leicester sank deeper and deeper into a financial mire.

However, there will be some adjusting to do.   Last season Monga played “over 1,000 minutes of senior football in all competitions, scoring once and providing two assists in 30 appearances,” and he is going to have to get used to being less than the star of the show.  Still, at least we have been told since his early breakthrough days that Arsenal was his first choice club to move onto, and he knows that there he will not be working for officials constantly worried about the details of football regulations like cost controls.   

Meanwhile, it seems that the financial disaster that Tottenham have landed themselves in of late, what with building a new stadium and trying to buy a new team at the same time, has not stopped Tottenham from trying to sign new players, nor Manchester United from looking to build a new stadium.   And that is interesting in terms of the stadium, given that having won the unbeaten season in 2004 Arsenal then had to wait until 2026 to win the league again.

The cause of course was the cost of the new Arsenal stadium, which soaked up all the money that might otherwise have gone into exciting and sometimes a little risky transfers.   Wenger of course was the hero of that era, keeping the club in the top four, for a dozen years while the debts were handled.

At the moment, ManU, like Tottenham before them, are full of celebrations about the idea of a new ground.  It will be interesting to see how pans out for them.

One other snippet of news over the last couple of days is that our old pal Aaron Ramsey has been given the job of head coach at Oxford United.  Last season they were relegated along with Leicester City and Sheffield Wednesday.  We wish him well.