Timothy wrote:
Everyone knows most of our youth team won't have good arsenal careers.
Yes. The academy setup's a way of building an Arsenal football culture, and is also a profitable line of business that sometimes produces a positive result for the first team.
Its value is completely inarguable, moreover I can't recall a single critic who comes up with any way to improve the youth setup beyond relatively unsubstantiated claims like "our scouts are so shit", "we need to hire ex-player X as our youth coach", "our youth prospects are always all rubbish" or similar. It is what it is.
You don't see other wealthy clubs with dozens of home grown world class academy prospects - there are a bare handful that do better than we do.
