Evening you Gooners !!! Before I start this thread, this is not a pop at your club or your manager in any way whatsoever. I have a bit of an issue with Wenger getting all the credit for bringing youth through at Arsenal. As a Southampton fan, I feel aggrieved that when you bought Walcott. within 6 months he was in the England squad and the press were falling over themselves " Oh hasn't Arsene Wenger done a wonderful job to get Theo in the England squad". Hang on a minute - Saints brought him through their academy, played him in our first team (albeit in the championship) played him in his rightful position, down the middle, sold him to you and then Wenger takes the plaudits for his call up to England. Then Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain takes exactly the same path and Wenger's at it again. Now I see Arsene has his beady eye on another of our hot prospects in the shape of Luke Shaw. Will the same thing happen again if you get Shaw, who by the way is gonna be a class act. I guess what I'm trying to say, is Arsene Wenger that much of a genius ??? Your thoughts would be most interesting. Cheers
Funnily enough Walcott and Oxocube are not the only youth players we have ever had at the club Also Walcott has developed from an inconssitent but talented 16 year old into a top quality player whilst at Arsenal - i think it's fair to say he will have benefited massively from the setup at Arsenal and the influence of top quality coaches and players. It took 6 years for Walcott to get to the level we required and i think thats plenty of time during a players development to claim some plaudits. And oxocube although slightly older thna Walcott was will need time to develop as well, he is defensively naive and inconsistent. He's a talent but he still has alot to learn and it will be Arsenal where he learns how to be a top level footballer. I thinks it's clear with players that move to a club at 16ish from another clubs academy that the club they came from takes some credit for the player, but post 16 is the important bit, how they develop and break into the first team - there is alot that should be credited to the team the player goes to. Can Barcelona take credit for the level Fabregas reached? He was one of many at Barca, came to us at 16 and was given the opportunity to play regular first team football of a very high level from a young age - that is what made him the player he turned out to be.
Well, there are a lot of things that you raise in this post. 1. Walcott through the middle. No manager has ever played Walcott as a lone striker in a 4-3-3. We play a 4-3-3, so Walcott doesn't play through the middle. Walcott only played through the middle when Southampton played a 4-4-2. 2. What is meant by "Bringing youth through"? In my opinion, it isn't getting a player into an England U19/U21 team, it is making the next step in taking that player to a full International level and Arsenal first team level. 3. Is Wenger personally responsible? Probably not, and he himself would probably not make that claim either, but he did pick the people that are responsible, and install the system that is used.
wengers great genius has never been developing players from our academy starting at the age of 10, as some uninformed pundits seem to think. what he does is unearth gems at reasonably low prices, before they become world class. he helps them to become world class when he buys them in between the ages of 16 to 20.
Surely stuff related to the Academy/youth setup would be the job of Liam Brady et al. Does Wenger have much of an input on regarding training, scouting, procurement etc for groups outside of the first team?
I honestly can't remember where I read it, but I am sure I read somewhere that Wenger attends training sessions and games, and is more involved at youth levels than most other premiership managers.
All good points. However, if you remember Theo was at Arsenal 6 months and was called into the England squad for world cup.Surely he couldn't have improved that much from playing in a struggling championship side, to a full England international in such a short space of time. Would he have got an England call up if he was still playing for Southampton when he was 16 - I don't think so. So please tell me how that happened, cause I really am struggling to understand !!!
Well, I think some of it is that Wenger's opinion does count for something. I think also that by playing for Arsenal, Walcott and Ox were able to prove themselves against top quality sides, something they would have to do before playing for England. I also think there is a huge difference between playing for England in a single friendly and becoming a regular. I don't really consider Ox a real England player yet for example. He has yet to have a full game against anyone other than San Marino.
Exactly right!!! Wenger's opinion!!!. It was on his recommendation to Sven that he should take him to the world cup, probably in the knowledge he was never going to get on the pitch, which in my honest opinion was a waste of a spot in the squad. Don't get me wrong, I love Theo as a player and he has come on leaps since I saw him at St Marys as a raw paced 16 year old and you have to give Arsenal credit for that. However, I'm not too sure he would have been much worse a player if he had have stayed at Southampton. Arsenal's coaching staff is obviously very good, but my point is, the Southampton coaching staff is pretty good too.
As a Saints fan I want to make this perfectly clear, as LastKnockingsnow failed to bring up. Shaw is going nowhere. He is set to sign a long term deal at Saints when he turns 18, like Ward-Prowse. It would take an offer exceeding the offer that got you Chamberlain to even make Cortese look at it.
Ofcourse he is a better player with Arsenal than he would have been if he stayed with the saints... He has been playing regularly in the Prem and the CL as well as being around the England setup for a long time (like you say down to the fact he came to Arsenal). As opposed to staying at saints and playing regularly in the lower leagues. So he has been able to test his ability against some of the best players in the world and work alongside some top, top players including two of the best strikers we have seen in the league in Henry and Van Persie. The level of experience he has gained with Arsenal, he could not have got at any other club and he will have benefited from it massively. On top of that there is also the fact we have incredible training facilities. The setup at Arsenal is simply of a much higher quality than at Saints. I'm not questioning the ability of your coaches, just pointing out that, what the coaches have to work with at Arsenal is the latest equipment and facilities.
Yep!!! Playing in the Premier league has improved him obviously. But please, Southampton training facilities are most definately on par with Arsenals with a new state of the art training complex currently under construction at Staplewood as we speak. Saints want to be one of the best clubs in England and eventually Europe - thats the vision of the owners and chairman and they wont stop until thats the case. Maybe then Arsenal youth players will come to Saints to play for us . Good luck for the rest of the season except new years day of course!!!
hmmmmm - i am thinking you are somewhat naive my friend. do you think all other clubs use medicine balls and whistles! Southampton have long been established alongside Crewe as the best clubs to bring through youth, however our facilities are first class and are getting better. a new £15m training facility is under construction that will be amongst the elite in europe - maybe check facts to validate your claims as you are someaht deluded on this point. to be fair, walcott has developed more at arsenal due to the player playing with and against but i also get the point that arsenal do get labelled a great club for youth development whan they are merely taking players from other clubs at a young age - fabregas is another example of this. arsenal do develop them but tonnes of work is done by the time they get to you - and you continue the next phase of development. not sure of the answer - what players have you developed from a proper youth age - you know coming through your system? quite frankly it doesnt really matter - with or without our youth set up arsenal have massively underachieved for years and most other coaches would have lost their jobs - the result at bradford is another example of this.
If you are currently building state of the art facilities that will put you on a level with Arsenals facilities - then congratulations But for the last 6 years of Walcotts development you didn't have it if it's currently under construction!
Already at the same level as Arsenal's etc.., we're now improving them to the highest spec in the UK.
There's more to an academy than just the facilities..... Coaches, reputation, scouts, medical staff..... And how exactly do you quantify 'highest spec in the UK' anyway?
All the other saints fans have been most polite, but you come across as very bitter. Did it upset you that we bought your players? No, i'm not naive. If you think that for the last six years your club has had equal or better training facilities than Arsenal then your the deluded one. I haven't at any point put down your ground or facilities. You are making the assumption that because you have invested alot in training and that alot of good things have been said that your training facilities are better than Arsenals. It is you who is being naive. Arsenal are one of the top clubs in europe and have a stadium and training/medical facilities to match. Saints have spent the best part of the last decade playing lower league football, but have facilities above there standing, but as far as i am aware and can find online, do not currently match Arsenal. Your new facility does look very good but i think you are underestimating how good Arsenal have it setup. Our training facility was designed to Wengers specification and includes 10 pitches with under soil drainage and automatic sprinkler system, some are also undersoil heated - all built to the specifications of the pitch at the Emirates to ensure training carries over as best as possible onto the game pitch. We have training rooms, physio rooms, massage rooms, remedial and hydrotherapy pools, squash courts, basketball courts, sauna, steam room, weights rooms, conference rooms, classrooms and just about any other room you can possibly think of a fitness/sporting use for. In 2011 we added a new medical and rehabilitation centre making us the leading club in the world for player welfare facilities. It really is state of the art down to the smallest details - heated windows to monitor the temperature, anti-gravity treadmills etc.. It was designed after world wide research into the facilities of leading clubs from a range of different sports. It also allows enough specialised space (and we hire enough staff) for 1-on-1 rehabilitation for any injured players at all times until they return from injury. Afaik we still have plans to lay further training pitches and constantly invest to make sure we are kept at the forefront of training and medical facilities at the club. The England International team also use our facilities in the lead up to games at Wembley. Oh and you come across as a right nobhead when you randomly chuck in a cheap dig at the Bradford result. And how long is this "years" of underachieving? Other than last season and this one most Arsenal fans are happy with how the club has done. It's hardly years of under-achieving and im sure some would argue that under Wenger we have been over-achieving for years. As for players that have come through the Arsenal youth system, the best example of a player joining us at like 10 years old and going on to make it is Wilshere, one of the best young midfield players in the world. If it produces just one of him every few years it will be a success. But what Wenger is very good at is finding players of 15-17 who have the talent to make it on the big stage but have not yet been recognised, or will not get the chance to develop at other clubs due to limited appearances for young players and then turning these guys into top quality players. The development from 16-22/23 is just as important as pre 16 in my opinion.
@Banksy - your upgrading them to be the highest spec in the uk? So your building better facilities than the current multi-billionaires at the Etihad? The ones who only recently announced they where aiming to build the best facilities in the country? I have a feeling they will succeed. I think the lot of you have got over excited and are over-exaggerating
I think the lot of you have got over excited and are over-exaggerating [/QUOTE] Just think we are very happy of where we are at the moment, with the ''deep down feeling'' that things will become better.
