We all know that the Arsenal fans are very unhappy that Arsene Wenger did not go out and spend squillions in the transfer market (like most other top clubs) but although everyone is saying that our ONLY acquisition this summer was the goalkeeper Petr Cech, the fact is that Wenger did snap up a bagfull of promising young players.
Looking at the prices of top players on the market, it is now becoming even more economical to buy talented youngsters and make them into stars, which has been Wenger’s philosophy for many years. The BIG difference is that now the club doesn’t have to sell them to balance the books.
Let us look at Arsenal’s Premier League senior squad for this season:
Arteta, Campbell, Cazorla, Cech, Coquelin, Debuchy, Flamini, Gabriel, Gibbs, Giroud, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Monreal, Ospina, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ozil, Ramsey, Rosicky, Sanchez, Walcott, Wilshere, Welbeck
There are two teams right there just in that list. Now let’s look at how many U21 Players that are also registered as being able to play in the Premier League:
Agyei-Tabi, Bellerin, Bennacer, Bielik, M. Bola, T. Bola, Chambers, Chatzitheodoridis, Da Graca, Dasilva, Donovan, Eyoma, Fortune, Gilmour, Hinds, Huddart, Iliev, Iwobi, Johnson, Kamara, Keto, Macey Mavididi, Moore, Mourgos, Nketiah, O’Connor, Osei-Tutu, Pileas, Pleguezuelo, Reine-Adelaide, Robinson, Sheaf, Tella, C. Willock.
There are some very talented players in that list of 31 youngsters too, including Bellerin, Chambers, Reine-Adelaide, Iwobi, Fortune, etc, who are all capable of progressing to the first team.
But that list does not take into account the most promising youngsters and senior players who have gone out on loan to further their development, and are on this list:
Carl Jenkinson – West Ham, Wojciech Szczesny – Roma, Yaya Sanogo – Ajax, Serge Gnabry – West Brom, Chuba Akpom – Hull City, Emiliano Martinez – Wolves, Isaac Hayden – Hull City, Jon-Miquel Toral – Birmingham, Wellington – Bolton, Geidon Zelalem – Rangers, Ainsley Maitland-Niles – Ipswich, Dan Crowley – Barnsley
That is yet another whole team of talented players out on loan!
So we may moan that Wenger has not invested in ready-made players, but I can see that we will have many more transfer windows like this in the future, because Arsenal have invested fortunes in buying youngsters to develop. I can see clearly Wenger’s aim is to never ever buy senior players again, and to simply promote from within.
That is why Wenger believes we have had a successful transfer window!