goon wrote:
That’s much more like it as far as youth recruitment goes. Have no idea what we were trying to do last year.
What I think happened . . .
We got in a loan manager and decided anyone talented should be out on loan or with the first team rather than the U23 who are generally a bit shit. There's no value in being in the U23 squad.
So we loaned out the youngsters with talent and needed bodies to fill the U23. The ideal solution would be to buy some talent. But realistically we've signed Cedric for a couple of million and Mari for 5m for the first team. We don't have a spare 20 mil to bulk out the U23. So we just signed a load of free transfers offering them their name on the back of an arsenal shirt and decent training facilities and poped them into the U23s.Â
We've loaned that Swedish kid out early to s lower team where he can get used to competitive football. Reserve football lacks a competitive edge. Saliba was the same when his French loan didn't come off we offered him to championship clubs and 3 clubs made an offer for him. We want these younger players in competitive environments. Wenger was happy to keep them in the sqaud working on combination play which helped in one way. But they weren't very competitive, there was huge complacency Wenger thought he could solve by bringing in some rough talent like Carl. Which didn't really come off. I think the new idea of loans will work better long term.
