It has been revealed yesterday on the Arsenal website that the Gunners have given a new professional contract to our 18 year old defender Zach Medley, who made his first team debut against Vorskla, and he could be the next youngster to make his way into the first team in an area where we need as much help as can get. Medley is a real Gooner and is very happy indeed: “It feels really good.” he said. I’m very pleased and honoured to be signing another contract with this club. I’ve been supporting them since I was a kid and I’ve been watching them since I was young, so to be able to sign with such an amazing team is really good.
“Since last year a lot of stuff has happened quite quickly in a short space of time, but I’ve just had to keep my head down and progress. Hopefully I can achieve more.”
He is obviously ahead of his time and has been playing excellently for the U23’s despite only being 18 and he could get more game time as the season progresses, especially with our terrible amount of defensive injuries. And next season we are unlikely to have Lichtsteiner, Monreal, and Jenkinson in the squad, and many of us would like to see Mustafi moved on as well, so we could see Medley join the likes of Mavropanos, Holding and Sokratis in the back line, and I expect we’ll get one more year out of Koscielny too.
Emery doesn’t seem interested in buying more defenders, as Ornstein said the other day about the January transfer window: “There was no talk of defensive recruitment and I think that’s mainly based on numbers, rather than quality. Arsenal aren’t stupid, they know there are defensive issues, but they also have a vast number of players, some of whom will be returning from injury. It was seen that a January signing would leave them with a difficult problem in the summer having to shift a number of players. You could say that should be done and they need to take those tough decisions. They do believe they have some quality so perhaps this is one they are looking to sort out in the summer.”
It certainly is a big problem, but I have a feeling that our management team is much more interested in bringing through our youth players than they are in the transfer market. This could be a very interesting summer for Arsenal fans…
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