Arsenal has promoted Folarin Balogun to their first-team squad this summer as he continues to develop at the club.
The striker spent some time with the senior squad last season after his prolific form for their youth team.
He was almost out of a contract at the club at the end of last season and he was reluctant to sign a new one.
However, the club has convinced him to sign on the dotted line and he has now been rewarded with a promotion to the first-team squad, according to Arsenal Youth via Sun Sports.
The attacker is currently in preseason with the club’s senior squad and the report says the promotion is permanent.
It claims that he has now had his squad number also reviewed from 38 to 26 which was last worn at the club by Emiliano Martinez.
Balogun will now hope to bring his impressive scoring form for the youth teams into the senior side.
The report says he isn’t the only youngster that is with their senior squad in preseason with Omari Hutchinson and Jack Henry-Francis included in the travelling party.
Both players would hope to get chances to impress before they have to play youth team football again.
Let him play , Martinelli should be given a chance too
martinelli and ESR getting new numbers
I see him doing better than nkethia
Promoting youngsters from academy to first team bench amounts to nothing, if those players don’t get some fair amount of minutes on the pitch in first team games. Not those couple of minutes before added time types, when the team is winning. If we are serious about building the squad for the future, short-term and long-term, the youngsters must be trusted into games around 60-70 minutes mark, even when we are not winning. We must let these kids to have a taste of the actual PL life.
I know that we won’t win anything with kids. But, this season we are not planning on winning anything, except getting better than the last season. We may at least make a proper assessment of these youngsters, if we take our chances with them.
25 man squad…
2 players registered per position?
3 utility players…
That’s it
Dunno where all the kids will fit in?
Balogun not 1st team on the official website!
There is no restriction for the number of players from the academy and U-21 group. Kids will be put into one of those two lists.
But, the thing that mattes most is to fast-track the development of players from the academy AND TO RETAIN THE BEST FROM THAT LOT. In the near future, the home-grown quota is going to increase from the present 8 to the proposed 12 which in turn reduce the foreign quota from the present 17 to just 13.
Please where is Ramon azeez his he in the squad . I think that player can step up this season. He is arsenal future player.