Bennacer plays for Milan and was the CAN player of the tournament. Arguably the pick of the bunch of the players we've released in the last decade or so, and someone we should have brought back this summer because he's better than anyone we've got, but fuck it. We can't dwell on shit like this forever. I think Muswell's point is correct though. The Wenger up until 2015 or so would have found a place for someone with such obvious qualities as Bennacer. Our youth policy fell apart on every level during the last few awful years. The academy lost its status, and I think one of the ripple effects was that Jadon Sancho turned us down partly because we had started to get a bad reputation. He wanted to play first team football and it was Dortmund who offered young players that kind of opportunity, not us.
There's good reason to think this has changed again though, with Freddie being promoted to the first team partly to oversee the transition from the U23, specific loan managers appointed to monitor how the lads are doing, etc. I'm not Emery's biggest fan but I have no complaints about how he's handling the youngsters so far. He seems committed to playing Willock, Guendouzi and Nelson, clearly rates Maitland-Niles, and judging by his comments I think Eddie will get plenty of minutes in the future too when he comes back from Leeds.
