Arsenal: the best young team in world football?

Well that was a statement from the Arsenal. A performance of attacking intent and quality that really put a marker down for the rest of the season. We bullied Leeds. Arteta’s men absolutely took the opposition to the cleaners. It was a shocking display of brutality. Almost animalistic.

I bloody loved it.

You know what, Leeds were decimated by injuries. Correct. But no one is going to remember that in a few days. The players aren’t going to care. This was a royal tonking. A performance and result that will most importantly give confidence to the lads that they can go out there and put in a 90 minute performance that downs tools over a good side.

You know what is also fantastic. For all of Leeds players missing, and the youngsters that replaced them; Arsenal still had a younger average age of match day side. So the youth card can’t even be played here.

Put simply our youngsters were better than theirs. Our youngsters in fact are better than most in the league.

This thought then got me onto the question – is there any team out there with a better crop of youngsters than us? I’m not so sure. I mean surely we’d be at least close to the top of Europe?

So for the purposes of this debate we’ll classify youngsters as 23 or under.

For Arsenal that qualifies: Saka, Smith-Rowe, Martinellli, Odegaard, Ramsdale, Lokonga, Tomiyasu, Taveras, and Nketiah.

For comparison only really Chelsea beg to converse about.

Liverpool (Konate, Trent, Elliot and Jones) United (Dalot and Greenwood), City (Foden, Torres and Palmer) have some high quality youngsters but not the same depth; whilst Tottenham don’t really deserve to even be in the conversation.

Chelsea‘s youth ranks look the following: Reece James, Trevor Chalobah, Malang Sarr, Mason Mount, Kai Havertz, Christian Pulisic, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Connor Gallagher.

Not a bad roster of young players, but I would match them fairly evenly with our lads at Arsenal.

So top 2 give or take in the Prem. Not bad at all. How about on the continent though?

Barcelona: Araujo, Dest, Pedri, Gavi, Ansu Fati. High quality here and some potential superstars, but again not stading above the Arsenal.

Real Madrid: Militao, Valverde, Camavinga, Vinicius, Rodygo. Again we have some high quality, but possibly lacking the amount of depth that Arsenal have or arguably the numbers that are impacting the starting eleven.

Bayern Munich: Upamecano, Davies, Musialam – once again some high quality without too much depth of players impacting at this moment in time.

Looking at the top sides around Europe I think it is fairly safe to say that the Arsenal youngsters are firmly in the top 5 around the globe. IN fact with the way we playing presently I would be happy to elevate that to number one depending on my mood for the day.

Regardless of where in that top 5 your individual feelings align the Arsenal with; it is a fantastic place to be. A few top quality signings coupled with ones for the future over the next few seasons is all we need to go from top 4 challenger to top of the table contender.

It’s close.

Boy do we Arsenal fans have something to get excited about.

Arteta is building something special; and all the lads are behind it.

Let’s get behind it too.

Kia Kaha.