Project youth, and why we have to keep it going « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News, supporting the club, the players and the manager
The story of the last time something odd went on
By Walter Broeckx
A lot of the criticism that is aimed at Arsenal and Wenger is about project youth. Some of the fans have been saying that project youth has failed because we didn’t win anything in the last 6 years. Other say it will win you nothing at all. Never. Other say name me X players that have come from the project youth and still we haven’t won anything. It needs to be buried, is the consensus amongst the enemies of project youth.
So let us presume for a minute that Arsenal would abandon the youth project completely. Let us presume for a moment Arsenal would give in to those from the AAA who say that buying is the only answer to win things again.
The first result would be that we never would have any chance of seeing players like Wilshere coming in the first team like he did. I could name Frimpong also because the way he played in pre-season last year was very promising and if he wouldn’t have got that terrible knee injury he would have been playing in the first team for a number of games. And I could add Rasmey, Fabregas,…. So scratch those players. But if we scratch them we need to buy players. Okay let us buy young and promising English players. What do you think about Carroll? 35M? Or Jones 18M? Or Henderson 18M? Young 18M? So let us suppose we buy 2 of those players. This would cost us around 36M.
And then we have 2 young and promising players but will they be any better than the players we have. Is a player like Henderson better than Wilshere for the moment? And remember Wilshere is younger than Henderson. I really don’t think so, but I could be a bit biased as I am an Arsenal supporter. But I do think that we can trust the coach of the national team and he has chosen Wilshere at a much younger age compared to Henderson. This could be a slight hint that Wilshere in fact is the better player or more promising of those two.
But if we would have given up on project youth we would not have those players and we would have to buy them. At very high and inflated prices. Just look at the few examples I have given. And then you have to keep in mind that the real big money spenders like Chelsea and Manchester City who can spend even more than the other clubs have not yet made their money moves. So prices could even go more up in the next weeks.
And then the question that we need to answer is: can Arsenal compete with those teams when it comes to spending money? Could we spend 50 to 60M each transfer window? No we can’t. But because we abound in project youth, remember, we will not have to spend it.
Each of the last seasons we have seen a young Arsenal player making the step to the first team and be good enough to be a regular player. The season before the last we have seen Ramsey coming good. This season we have seen Wilshere. Next season I am sure another will step up. So this means that we will need some 15-20M each year spend on a Wilshere, Ramsey, Frimpong we will have to buy at another club. And with the danger that other clubs like City and Chelsea will buy them as they can offer more money than we have.
As a result we maybe would have to settle for players with lesser talent. Because we don’t have a rich owner who can spend money as if it is nothing.
So if we say Frimpong or Lansbury or Coquelin or JET will be the next Wilshere this season. And then we also have some other promising youngsters coming through the youth ranks like Jebb in the years to follow. Remember that name as he can become a really great player if all goes well. So for each of those names we will have to find another player that will cost of a lot of money.
Now you could say who cares? I want Arsenal to buy big names. Big and experienced players. Fine forget the young players that have been bought this summer by teams like Liverpool and Manchester United. Let us compete with the major stars in the game. And I will not even talk about the really big stars out there like Ronaldo, Messi, Xavi or Iniesta. They are out of reach. Unless you have an Arab or Russian owner who is crazy enough to buy anything that moves on a football pitch. We can’t compete with them.
But we can see the prices those teams pay for other players and then we end up with prices in the bracket of something between £25-45M for a well established player. But as we had to spend already some £15M on a youngster (a cheaper one compared to the others as we are Arsenal and we keep it cheap) we cannot afford such a player at all. Oh yes we could try to do it but will it help?
Look at Real Madrid. They bought the most expensive player with Ronaldo, brought in the best coach in the world with Mourinho and won 1 spanish cup in two years. Okay I admit one cup more than Arsenal did. We could have won one as we were in the final. We blew it ourselves but when you want to compare the number of finals we and Real Madrid have made in the last two years it is the same number: one. And well, losing a final is well a painful part of the game.
But we simply can’t compete with the big money spenders. Chelsea spending £70M on one day in the transfer window is something we cannot do. Spending like City is something we cannot do. We have to be realistic on this. We don’t have those resources at all.
So for all those shouting at Arsenal to stop the youth project it will be the fastest way to complete disaster in the future. In fact without this project youth we would have no chance at all in the future to compete with the crazy money spenders. We can only hope that Arsenal keep this project going, develop it even more than now and try to create our own superstars. And by doing this we will have more Gooner-Gunners players. You now the ones with Gunner DNA in their body.
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