Why are our youth players coming through in such great numbers?

by Sir Hardly Anyone

So how come our youth players are doing so well as we have been suggesting of late?

It is an issue that has been touched upon of late, but there is another reason which seems to be relevant as shown by this rather exciteable headline in the Daily Mail…

“Manchester City have banked over £60m more than their top-six rivals through flogging academy players.”

In fact the subsequent article claims it is over £70m, so I wonder if the headline writer had just come back from the pub when he changed that to £60m.  Not like the Mail and that rather underisable anti-Arsenal blog it sponsors to underdo an commentary like that.

The full figure for meat sales they give is £70,672,876 from trading in young men and the Mail, always a newspaper in favour of treating people as saleable commodities reflect with gusto and enthusiasm that “Funds made by academy player sales dwarf figures achieved by rivals.” I suppose the banner headline could have been “Manchester City, retailers of young men” but maybe they are holding that back for next time.  Unless Man City asked them not to run that of course.   The Mail is always known to support repressive governments.

Elsewhere the “Daily cannon” is worried, as it runs the headline “Lee Bowyer had a lot of praise for Krystian Bielik after Charlton’s win over Barnsley on Saturday, but he also had rather worrying news on the injury front.”

Except that maybe that headline doesn’t do full justice to the reality.  Here is what follows the story…

“Bielik was coming back from a calf strain over the weekend, making his first start since the beginning of September. The Arsenal loanee made a return to his usual centre-back role, after playing defensive midfield in some of Charlton’s early games of the campaign.

“It doesn’t get much better for a centre-back than keeping a clean sheet, and that’s exactly what Bielik did in the 2-0 victory. However, he had to come off in the 82nd minute with cramp. Manager Bowyer gave his thoughts on the performance afterwards, as well as his assessment of the defender’s fitness.”

Oh my goodness.  Shock Horror!!!  Cramp!!!!!!!   After returning from an injury lay off !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let’s move on: “Manchester United star Alexis Sanchez offered Old Trafford exit; Arsenal lead race to land massive deal… ”

The increasingly excitable Bristol Live has this one.  There is no connection between the two stories however.  For as the paper says, “Arsenal are in ‘pole position’ to land highly-rated Roma winger Cengiz Under according to reports in Italy, via Sport Witness.”   Bristol of course is a well known stopping point for Manchester United supporters travelling from their spiritual home of Cornwall up to watch the game.

And just think of the headline if Mr Under joins Arsenal and the deal is confirmed.  Yes it is

UNDER DONE

As for the Arsenal news, try this one.  “Arsenal star Hector Bellerin makes claim to fans ahead of Leicester visit.”

Claim?   What claim might that be?   That there is a claim is claimed by the Star and by “Brief Report” who tend to copy such things and print them again.   And would you know it?  It turns out there is none.  Whoever heard of a national newspaper writing a headline with no connection with the following story?

Here is the tale…

ARSENAL star Hector Bellerin has called for the club to remain ‘realistic’ despite their impressive run of form under Unai Emery.

Wow!

And the manager what does he say?

“Usually I want to break my statistics, thinking wins, thinking of the best performance, and the next match is Leicester,” says Emery. “If we are thinking it’s easy, maybe that’s a weakness. Our weakness is if we look a lot behind us at the last matches.”

In short, our manager is quoting Bob Dylan although not exactly – Bob being associated with “Don’t look back”.

Ah well.  Time for an afternoon nap.

 

6 Replies to “Why are our youth players coming through in such great numbers?”

  1. A@Gord,

    Great result for the Women. Full report to come, probably tomorrow. Chelsea dropped two more points, they will need to win the Champions League in order to play in it next year.

  2. COYG! Let’s beat Leicester tomorrow and Palace on Sunday and go top of the table; that’s where we belong!

  3. I had thought I am the only Gooner that’s thinking and wishing Arsenal to gradually go to the top of the table sooner that much latter this season. But now I can see I have a fellow Untolder who also has the same thinking and wish as I.

    But first thing first. The Gunners should tomorrow at the Ems seize the opportunity that is now dangling to their faces to go 3rd in the table singular on their own and go there by beating Leicester City 5 nil to top Chelsea on GD in 3rd position in the table. Will Arsenal then beat Leicester 5 nil tomorrow night? I think they will.

    Many of Arsenal Hale End players are doing very well in their football because of the superior knowledge, training and coaching they are getting or have received at the Arsenal academy schools. And also couple with the hard work they’ve put into their training at the schools which is making them good footballers to seek after by some other club sides. Obviously these top quality products the Arsenal academy schools is turning out for the club on periodic basis is helping immensely allowing the club to save a lot of money in transfer fees if these players were to be signed from the transfer market. Emilie Smith-Rowe a product of the aged schools has recently this season broken into the senior team I’ll think, to follow the likes of Hector Bellerin, Alex Iwobi and Ainsley Matland-Niles who have broken into the senior team squad already. And Reiss Nelson is looking to join the quartet next season after he has completed his loan deal at Hoffenheim.

  4. Am I the only one who’s thinking that the reason we have so many great young players coming through at the moment is because of that completely crap manager that we used to have who was absolutely useless because he couldn’t compete with clubs spending much more than us!

  5. Mike – Nah, everyone knows that Wenger had literally all of the money in the universe available to him, he just decided not to use it because he is a tight penny-pincher that would rather save a few quid of someone else’s money than achieve success.

    (As unbearably stupid as all of that sounds, that was honestly the logic of so many Arsenal “fans”)

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