Many don’t. They are just a few examples from a host of players that were supposed to re-invigorate Arsenal’s Premier League ambitions but have fallen by the way-side, doomed to life in the lower echelons of the Football League.
Arsene Wenger has been renowned and, until recently, celebrated for placing his faith in young academy players to bolster his first team, preferring not to spend the large amounts of money characteristically spent by a top club. This summer, it appears that things are about to change as Robin Van Persie looks likely to leave the Gunners, while the club has already forked out over £20 million for both Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud.
With a £55 million war chest reportedly available to Wenger, the club’s youth policy is therefore called into question. Wenger’s insistence on youth, which for a time appeared so promising, seems to have fizzled out. In recent times, only Jack Wilshere (the only member of the 2009 FA Youth Cup team to break into the first team) can really be paraded as a top-class product of the Arsenal academy, or even a product at all.
Arsenal’s team has been paraded as a shining example of youth development and yet they have only one regular first-team player who has been at Arsenal throughout his youth career (the only real excpetion to this is Emmanuel Frimpong, who is yet to secure a first-time place). The emphasis has instead been placed upon bringing in young players from other teams, often with large sums of money, to bolster their own.
Of course, there are thousands of players every year at professional clubs that fail to make it in the professional game, and the list of hot prospects that never fulfilled their potential is endless: Steffan Moore, Francis Jeffers and Michael Ricketts to name but a few. So to single Arsenal out as a failure may seem a little unfair. However, such is the emphasis that has been placed upon the success of their youth system, one has to question why.Wenger is more willing than most top managers to pick youth players in his first team, even for high-profile matches.
Cesc Fabregas, the club’s former captain and midfield maestro, was signed from Barcelona at the age of 16. Theo Walcott, then aged 17, joined for £9.1 million from Southampton in 2006. The same academy then provided Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain for £12 million just a year ago, aged 17. Aaron Ramsey joined in 2008 from Cardiff for £4.8 million aged 18. Even Kieran Gibbs, who many would point out as being in a similar position to Wishere, only joined Arsenal as a result of Wimbledon collapsing in 2004.
Against Liverpool at home, Emmanuel Frimpong, Carl Jenkinson, Ignasi Miquel and Henri Lansbury featured in a 2-0 defeat. Then against Manchester United, Franci Coquelin and Armand Traore featured alongside Jenkinson and Lansbury once more. They lost 8-2. Contrast this to their 5-3 victory away at Chelsea which revitalised their season, of the “young guns” only Oxlade-Chamberlain played – an eighty-fifth minute sub.
Although many of the younger players were only included earlier in the season to cover for injuries, it was immediately clear that they could not cope at the highest level. To throw in young players for League Cup campaigns is one thing, but under the intensity of the Premier League glare, Arsenal’s bright lights failed to shine.
So what happened to the players mentioned above? Kerrea Gilbert never really broke through into the Arsenal first team, falling behing Lauren, Eboue and then Sagna for the right-back position. He spent some time in the lower leagues and now plays for Shamrock Rovers in Ireland. Thomas Cruise debuted for Arsenal in the Champions league against Olympiakos but then did not play for them again and is currently a free agent.
Mark Randall, once touted as a future key player for Arsenal, is now at Chesterfield after his release in 2011. Arturo Lupoli made just one first team appearance before being loaned out to Derby; he now plays in the lower reaches of Serie B – a rather large climb-down for a player once billed as “the future of Italian football”.
Arsene Wenger should be given some credit for placing his trust in youth, even if the youth players are not necessarily produced in his own academy. This trust is of course bred of his early successes in charge of Arsenal, signing Thierry Henry as a 17-year-old winger, Robin Van Persie was a 20-year-old winger on arrival, but all top managers strike gold at some point.
Perhaps, then, the store of credit he received for those bargain buys has dried out. The academy operation appears to have failed and Arsenal are, as they seem to have been for the last five years, in serious danger of being a young team who never come of age; Wenger is going to need all of his £55 million this summer, and more.