Clrnc
I'm not really sure it's fair to keep hanging that Willian signing around Arteta's neck. The logic behind the signing, given that Arteta obviously didn't rate Pepe, was sound (if a touch misguided) and given that Willian is a right winger and Bukayo Saka has very clearly made this position his own... It's not so much that Arteta gave Saka a chance, Saka had already kicked the first team dressing room door down. And I think that that's what these kids have to be able to do. Saka, almost from his first touches in the first team, has just looked like he belongs. He is proper special.
It may be that the likes of Patino and Balogun also prove themselves to be special players, but their early forays into the first team have been, at best, mixed. Charlie Patino, in particular, looked like a startled deer when fielded at Nottingham Forest last season - that's not his fault, he's a kid, but it showed he needed a lot more development before he gets any more exposure in the first team. Throwing him in two seasons ago would likely have set him back years, possibly fatally for his Arsenal career.
Look at our first team, we already have the second youngest side in the Premier League - bottom club Southampton are younger apparently, which shows you this approach can go wrong. Given that Saka and Saliba have very clearly established themselves as cornerstones of a team having its best season (whatever happens in the next two months) for 20 years, it's wrong to say that Arteta doesn't give youth a chance, but you're not going to get that chance just because you're young, you have to be good enough. And who's to say, looking at the league table, Arteta has it wrong?
I also think, part of the reticence is also partly about creating the right dressing room conditions for the kids to come in and flourish. I don't know if anyone remembers how dead the club felt when Arteta came in. We'd lost 3-0 to City weeks previously and it seemed like nobody was particularly surprised, or bothered by it. Then he comes in and finds a dressing room full of bluffers and chancers - so he has to sort that out.
I was thinking about this watching us against Fulham. Watching us play that possession football with teeth so high up the pitch and it made me think back 2-3 years to how robotic and predictable so much of our football was - everyone hated it, correctly. But the fact was if we'd tried to play like we are doing now, we would have fallen on our faces.
I might be wrong, but I think now Arteta has got his fundamentals in place - and, largely, the playing squad he wants - it will be easier to blood youngsters into a healthy competitive environment. That said, the trade off will be that the quality of the playing squad has been increased exponentially (I think this might be the best squad we've had since Wenger's heyday) so it will be more difficult for youngsters to break through. And some of them won't - that's fine, because we will make money on most of these players - but the ones that do will be very exciting indeed.
