Morning! Anyone still buzzing from Sunday?

Whenever we lose a game such as West Ham or at Fulham, I always think you need to take the rough with the smooth. Football is a game of incredible highs and lows and you can not have one without the other.

Mid-week with no football so there is very little happening!

Arsenal are in negotiations with Amario Cozier-Duberry. He is also reprotedly garnering plenty of interest from elsewhere.

🔴⚪️ Arsenal are still in negotiations to get new deal done for English 2005 born talent Amario Cozier-Duberry. Talks ongoing.

Borussia Dortmund, Ajax, Anderlecht, Wolves and Newcastle are showing interest for free transfer in June — in case talks with #AFC collapse. pic.twitter.com/f8mykNkNfx

— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) February 6, 2024

Cozier-Duberry’s contract expires in the summer, and we have got ourselves in this position a few times recently with youngsters in contract dispute.

The issue stems from their lack of game time, which I do not see as a problem. If they were good enough, they would be getting games.

We have moved on from 2018 where, with Europa League football, we could give yougnsters game time. 10-minutes here or there when we are beating Sheffield United will do nothing for their development. And playing them longer will put our title chances at risk.

Fans demand us to be the best of the best. To secure those players who can win us the title. Then at the same complain that we are not giving youngsters a chance. You can not really have both and only those youngster who are truly special will break through.

Likewise, players seem to be more impatient than ever. They are looking for a move away if they do not get game time when they are not ready. And why would a club give them game time if they are refusing to sign a new deal?

At 18, they should be signing that new 3-year deal and then heading out on loan. After a year of playing in the Championship, both them and the club will have a clearer view of where their future lies.

Liverpool’s Conor Bradley is a perfect example of this.

Bradley singed his new deal with his boyhood club at 18. He was then loaned out to Bolton Wanderers for a year, playing more than 50 games in a single season. This season he has become part of Liverpool’s first team squad, and has established himself as their second choice right back behind Trent Alexander-Arnold. He turns 21 in July.

Omari Hutchinson should be a warning to those players within our academy that are looking to leave due to not getting their chance.

In 2022. Hutchinson decided he had a better chance of first team football at Chelsea. Arsenal were looking to loan him out for the 2022/23 season.

Hutchinson’s first year at Chelsea saw him play just 2 games, playing just 49 minutes. For 2023/24 he was loaned out to Ipswich Town. So by leaving Arsenal, he lost a year of his development as Arsenal had that loan deal lined up for a year earlier.

Whilst on loan, Hutchinson has not exactly ripped things up in Suffolk. He has started just 7 Championship game and played 37% of Ipswich’s total minutes across all games.

Lino Sousa also recently left after deciding he had better first team opportunities at Aston Villa. He is now on loan at Plymouth Argyle.

I have no issue players leaving for first team football. It is after-all their career. But there has yet been a youngster who has left our academy at 18 or 19 and gone on to prove us wrong. We have not had a Jadon Sancho or Paul Pogba.

Cozier-Duberry, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ethan Nwaneri and others are all good youth players. But none of them are ready for Arsenal’s first team – or any other Premier League first team. If they decide to leave us due to not getting their first team opportunity, then “goodbye and good luck” lads. They will soon find out the grass is not greener.

Arteta needs to make personel decisions based on the players who will give us the best chance to win the league this season. If that means we lose youngsters who are not currently good enough to make an impact, then fair enough.

My final thought on this is for those who will say Arteta does not give youngsters a chance whilst other managers do. I always look at the top level of English football as the comparison – playing for the English national team.

Bukayo Saka is England’s 5th youngest player to pull on the shirt in the last 12 months. The 4 younger have been Jude Bellingham (27 caps), Cole Palmer (2 caps), Levi Colwill (1 cap) and Rico Lewis (1 cap).

So the only team to have developed a regular England international since Bukayo Saka is Birmingham City.

Not much else happening except for the usual BS transfer speculation. Enjoy your Wednesday.

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Keenos

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