- This is not the pre-season we wanted: but there is one great shining light
- Fifa, Uefa and FA are not above the law after all.
By Tony Attwood
In fact virtually everything and everyone is revolting for the Sun, but in this case they have run the headline, “ARSENAL fans demanded that Gabriel Martinelli be sold at HALF-TIME of their clash against Villarreal.” In fact what they mean is that a few Arsenal fans who were not at the match made that rather childish and impractical demand, which is hardly the same thing.
And it is worth thinking about this for a moment, not just in relation to Martinelli, but also to the Sun and Arsenal.
For we should remember that The Sun newspaper can deliver positive commentaries as with their headline at the moment “Over the Roon “ which is followed by the pronouncement that “Wayne Rooney’s son Kai, 15, jumps THREE age groups as he’s called up to Man Utd U19s pre-season tour.”
But there is a second Arsenal headline on their home page at the moment I write this, which reads, “ Gyokeres upstaged by £72m Gunners flop on Emirates Stadium bow.”
So now we have the story that Arsenal spent a fortune on a player who is a flop (which is true – but is also true for every other club on occasion), but also made a flop out of a player who is now a star elsewhere (which is not quite true as in their 12 seasons since promotion they have finishd between 14th (once) and 4th (once) in the league.
Their exact comment is “So while we all expected an expensive signing by Arsenal to score, you would not have had any money on it being £72m Arsenal flop Pepe.”
Yet when Pepe was at Arsenal, the Sun was notorious for running a whole series of anti-Pepe articles telling him to get out of Arsenal as fast as he could while suggesting with no evidence that Pepe was quite happy to stay at the club and take his salary without playing. Now he is the hero because, of course, he has just played against Arsenal.
Meanwhile, elsewhere, amidst the celebrations for Rooney’s son, the fact is that even TNT Sports noticed that “there was yet another shining moment for starlet Max Dowman. The 15-year-old won another penalty for his side as he continues to impress and potentially force his way into Mikel Arteta’s plans for this season.”
But really it was pretty hard not to notice how good Max Dowman was; and in fact you’d have to be pretty ignorant of football in general (or a journalist, or both) not to take on board the fact that apart from Max Dowman, Arsenal also have Myles Lewis-Skelly (26 starts, 13 games as sub last season) and Ethan Nwaneri (16 starts, 21 sub appearances nad nine goals last campaign) who each make pretty amazing stories – although of course not for today’s media.
Yet the fact is that Arsenal are bringing in these amazing young players who not only offer more and more to the club, but also are English, and therefore that helps with the rules about homegrown players. Plus, they are under 21, which helps Arsenal develop and maintain a bigger squad since they don’t count in the list of 25 registered players. And beyond all that, we now have Max Dowman as well.
It is, of course, quite possible that another club – or maybe even Arsenal in the past- have actually exceeded this achievement in terms of English players coming through the ranks and joining the first team at very young ages, but even so, you might still think it was quite a story.
The Home Grown players rule can be a problem for many clubs, with at least seven of the 25 players on the club list counting as homegrown. Of course these Arsenal youngsters don’t yet get onto the list of 25 registered players because the under 21s don’t count – but all being well, in a few years they will be there, and not only helping the club by playing, but also helping keep with that rule that says, ” no more than 17 players who do not fulfil the Home Grown Playercriteria.”
So a double bonus. The players are not even on the 25-squad list because they are so young, and even when they hit the age to qualify for the list, they come into that difficult-to-fill homegrown list.
Of course, we don’t have the formal list of players for 2025/6 yet, as the window is still open, but last season’s list of home players was David Raya, Declan Rice. Bukayo Saka, William Saliba, Raheem Sterling, Gabriel Martinelli and Ben White. Which as you will notice, was only seven players and one of those has gone; the point being we simply didn’t have an eighth English-born or trained player over 21 who could be added to the list. So we have spaces in that list – and the youngsters are too young to have to think about in this regard. But if we can keep them at Arsenal, their talent AND their nationality is going to be a real bonus.
