Crowley's goal last night. Nice. Love this kid.

i like this new u23 format. based on how we look, no player on the field is above this level. even the jeff who is dribbling around liverpool for fun is failing when he gets to the final 1/3. this is a good level for them. you can see why akpom didn't score much on loan.

9 days later

Decent goal from Ainsley Maitland-Niles for the England U20s the other day.

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What's up with Maitland-Niles, speaking of? Why wasn't he promoted to the first team this season?

I saw something the other day, can't remember what, that made me think he's getting converted into a full-back. I don't really know whether this is a good move for him, or us, but my feeling is that it's easier to get into our squad in that area rather than as a forward/winger/midfielder.

7 days later

PSG U19 vs Arsenal U19 is live on BT Sports. 1700 Kick-off. Hoping to get home in time to watch it, but there should be a lot of streams around for it as well. I'll post one here for anyone that's interested.

Let me know how Ikone does.

Now Malen misses a sitter after a good cut back from Willock.

Their lads seem stronger, more athletic and, worst of all, more skillful than ours.

Yup, a clear level above. Bielik the exception.

Willock and Nelson are better than anything they have in my opinion. Unfortunately our centre midfielders aren't quite up to it and so there's no platform to build from.

Nketiah should have won the game but his finish was really tame. Decent point for the kids. Home support counts for a lot at this level.

Fantastic draw thanks to mental strength.

The PSG players looked much more developed at this level physically but technically I don't think we are far off.

I don't know how you could say that when we couldn't get the ball off them and struggled to hold onto the ball for any extended period.

Ricky1985 wrote:

Willock and Nelson are better than anything they have in my opinion. Unfortunately our centre midfielders aren't quite up to it and so there's no platform to build from.

i watched this game from start to finish and there is a reason they were getting a talking too from freddy. they were shit.

Who, Willock and Nelson or the central midfielders?

Impossible to judge the attackers when the midfield was overrun by better players.
Didn't get a chance but i expected a bit more from Willock who was outstanding last year.
They were not as shit as the fullbacks though who were beaten by the attacking wingers time and again.
Luckily they never had a striker and all their approach play counted for nought.
Happy to give them a pass due to the draw which is positive result away from home.

Ricky1985 wrote:

Who, Willock and Nelson or the central midfielders?

willock and nelson got a talking too from freddy as they were going in at half time. they were especially shit in the first half, slightly less shit in the 2nd half.

9 days later
8 days later
Bold Tone wrote:

That channel is gold!!

Check this out! - 

2 months later
3 months later

Hello everybody! Not been able to get on here much recently, but I did manage to go to the Emirates on Monday night for an U23 game against Man City.

Some good performances (and talent) on both sides, but Reiss Nelson stood out above all others for me. Great performance.

Something positive anyway. Much needed at Arsenal right now!

Indeed. Nice to see you around Ricky!

Do you reckon any of these lads have first team potential aside from Nelson? Was Maitland-Niles playing?

Cheers, Klaus.

Maitlaind-Niles was outstanding. Played holding midfield, alongside Jeff. He covers every blade of grass and has that knack of always being in the right place to nick the ball back. He's no fool with the ball either. I think our team is crying out for someone with those qualities in central midfield.

Jeff was silky on the ball but seemed a bit too passive for periods of the game. Frustrating because when he has a good 5 minutes he looks superb. With his build, athleticism and technical ability though, he's got to have a very good chance here.

Cohen Bramall, the non-league left back we signed in January, looked interesting. Raw as anything, diving in constantly - some real crunching Sunday league tackles - not overly good on the ball, although can carry it and whip a pretty good cross in, but my word is he fast! Glides around effortlessly but quicker than everyone else by far. Not sure how much he'll improve but definitely something to work with there.

So those three stood out, along with the obvious class of Rob Holding but you'd expect that from him.

Welcome back Ricky.
My worry is Jeff.
Is it too early to start thinking JET?

Need to see how he fares when he starts playing proper football. JET just turned out to be a bit thick in the end, Jeff certainly isn't that- at least he doesn't play that way - he just lacks aggression on the pitch.

Not sure he's ever really played in midfield either, always played wide or even as a striker. So hopefully moving into a part of the pitch where you've got to show a bit of fight and be switched on for longer peiods than out wide will help bring more out of him.

Ricky1985 wrote:

Maitlaind-Niles was outstanding. Played holding midfield, alongside Jeff. He covers every blade of grass and has that knack of always being in the right place to nick the ball back. He's no fool with the ball either. I think our team is crying out for someone with those qualities in central midfield.

Cheers Ricky. That's good to hear. I think Maitland-Niles excites me the most out of our young talents at the moment based on what I've seen of them; even more than Iwobi. I think he could have done a bigger job for us this season too. I can't help but feel that he would have found more first team opportunities at Arsenal five or six years ago when we, for better or worse, weren't so apprehensive about using players as long as they had the quality.

Nice to see you back here Ricky. How do you think Nelson compares to City's best talent Jadon Sancho? By all accounts they were both impressive and are really similar players too.

How's Willock and Malen doing nowadays?

Klaus wrote:
Ricky1985 wrote:

Maitlaind-Niles was outstanding. Played holding midfield, alongside Jeff. He covers every blade of grass and has that knack of always being in the right place to nick the ball back. He's no fool with the ball either. I think our team is crying out for someone with those qualities in central midfield.

Cheers Ricky. That's good to hear. I think Maitland-Niles excites me the most out of our young talents at the moment based on what I've seen of them; even more than Iwobi. I think he could have done a bigger job for us this season too. I can't help but feel that he would have found more first team opportunities at Arsenal five or six years ago when we, for better or worse, weren't so apprehensive about using players as long as they had the quality.

Our squad is too big now, inflated. Even when there's an opportunity Wenger will favour the senior guys. We need to be quicker to get rid of filler and let the young guys take a space.


Jenko showing Sanogo how it's done.

Sanogo was astonishingly bad. Genuinely took me aback.

I agree entirely with the the posts above about our bloated squad. For me, having players in the squad like Gabriel, Elneny and Lucas Perez (and others) that cost the club £30m+ in transfer fees and continue to cost the club 100k+ per week in wages, is just not efficient. Even more so when you have a very good youth system, with some very good players champing at the bit to get a chance.

Clrnc wrote:

Nice to see you back here Ricky. How do you think Nelson compares to City's best talent Jadon Sancho? By all accounts they were both impressive and are really similar players too.

How's Willock and Malen doing nowadays?

Kept an eye on Sancho since City signed him from Watford as a 14 year old for 500k. Was looking forward to seeing him live on Monday.

A little difficult to compare him and Nelson. They are different sorts of player. Sancho is a head down and beat his fullback with every single trick in the Fifa play book type of forward. His balance and close control is ridiculously good. He's quick, but not overly quick, and very much specialised in that left side, cutting in forward role.

Nelson is different. He doesn't have anything like the same number of skills in his locker - although he has a fair few - he beats people in a more old fashioned way. Sancho definitely the more dangerous one-v-one though. Nelson has played right wing, left wing, number 10 (where he was playing in the video above) and as a centre midfielder. He's explosively quick and a proper athlete. He can carry the ball, he has great feet in tight spaces, has an excellent passing range, sees runs and has the ability to play those perfectly weighted slide rule passes. He's not really shown himself to be a great goalscorer for Arsenal, but he can hit a ball and finish and has scored lots for goals for England youth sides.

Nelson has that Arsenal vibe to him where he always does the right thing, not greedy or arrogant at all. You almost want him to be more selfish because you can see the quality he has when he goes himself. And he did play more like that the other night actually. Sancho is the opposite. I am confident Nelson will look even better when he's playing with top level players whereas Sancho's success depends entirely on whether his skills and close control is good enough to bamboozle Premier League fullbacks the way it does the U18 ones.

Both big talents but I reckon Nelson is more of a sure thing right now.

Incidentally, Sancho is yet to turn 17 and there has been a lot of talk about us trying to lure him back down to London before he signs his first contract. City have reportedly offered him something like 30k a week to make sure that doesn't happen. I don't think there's much chance at all of him not singing for them but It'd be a great coup to get him.

Malen and Willock have done alright this season. The former has been playing for the U18s until recently and has looked too good for that level. Scored a fair few goals. Willock hasn't had quite the same level of influence this season, I think that's because Nelson has kind of taken over at that level. Willock has been linked with a summer move to Celtic recently. I think that'd be a good move for him and us. Put a favourably priced buy-back clause in his contract and we have it covered if he develops well up there.

Edit - same guy that made the Nelson video has made one for Sancho. So you can see what I'm talking about:

Re: Sanogo, it's amazing that in a group of Mbappe, Martial, Lemar, Fekir, Carrasco (all young attacking players in France), Wenger picked Sanogo as his best bet.

"Yaya Sanogo will surprise you"

Not convinced by Nelson. Movement is a bit mechanical and not dynamic enough by the looks. Huge step up to the first eleven.

Fortune looks the most interesting player we have