After seeing Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka break into their first team, Arsenal will be keen to keep hold of their top academy talents.
One player that is on the cusp of breaking into their first team is Miguel Azeez and the Gunners are closing in on signing him on to a new deal.
Sun Sports reports that he will be out of a contract at the end of this season, but Arsenal sees a future for him at the club.
They have now entered talks with him over a long-term extension to his current terms.
The 18-year-old is one of the exciting players turning out for their academy sides and he got his first minutes of senior football as a late sub in December’s 4-2 win at Dundalk.
He will target promotion to the first team, as the likes of Saka have done, at the start of next season.
Arsenal has maintained its reputation for being fearless in giving first-team chances to players in their academy.
Mikel Arteta might not have all the money he needs to buy players in the summer and that would make Azeez a target for first-team promotion.
Yes there is no need to buy over priced foreigners from greedy European clubs.
Just sign academy players on performance based contracts.
Base salary 10k p/w.
Making the starting team. 10k.
A good performance 10k.
Win bonus 10k.
Max 40k p/w.
When they want more sell them.
And while you expect prospects like Azees to accept those terms, big clubs will be waiting in the wings to snap them up… Balogun for example?
That is when a club decides if it is a BIG club, or just a feeder club for the real big clubs.
95% of youngsters don’t become successful professionals. I can only think of Harry Kane in the last 20 years we mssed out on. We rejected him he was not snapped up by another club.
Gnarby, Saka, ESR?
Jordan Sancho plus the midfielder at Dortmund, Martinelli, there are more than we may think.
👍 👍
Well, Balogun has been available to talk to these BIG clubs for over 2 months now and still haven’t made pre-contract with any one of them.
Sporting Director of PSG just warned talents leaving their clubs for nothing, mentioning TIanzou who left PSG to sit on the bench in Bayern.
Grass isn’t always greener for prospects.
But yes, we have lost out on many youth prospects who could’ve at least occupied a spot in the first team squad.
Gnabry, Bennacer, Malen, Reine-Adelaide, Sancho, maybe even Mavididi.
I don’t know how Ceballos plays in our team over Azeez.
He is a non-dramatic Guendouzi with extra sprinkling, stable on the ball, keeps it simple but not too simple as Elneny. Simple and effective not simple and safe.
I’ve watched the kid play. He’ll be captain if he’s still at Arsenal in 6 or so years from now.
We played some exciting football under Wenger with the youngsters, and at times got whipped, but that was much better than the later reign of Wenger with the useless line up of Chech, Mustafi, Kolasinac, Xhaka, Elneny, Ozil, etc. Better let the kids take up the slots rather than the useless / over hyped, overpaid, over priced Cabellos, Odegard, Willian, Laca, Pepe, Xhaka, Elneny, Luiz