Arsenal u21 elimination underlines poor academy season | OneFootball

The Arsenal u21s and Arsenal u18s both lost on Saturday, bringing the u21 campaign to an early end and leaving the u18s floundering in the bottom half of the table.

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Whilst the first team were in action against Newcastle United, the Arsenal u21s and u18s also had matches to play on Saturday.

The u18s were up first, hosting West Ham in a league fixture, and they took an early lead through Bowen Phillips just 4 minutes in.

West Ham responded through Lewis Beckford, and though Arsenal reclaimed the lead through Saurap Sampang, Chukwumeka Obi brought the Hammers level again before half-time.

The goals kept coming in the second half, with Andre Dike giving West Ham a 3-2 lead cancelled out by a Louis Zecevic-John penalty. But despite the visitors going down to 10 men, Dike scored his second in the 94th minute to win the match 4-3.

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The Arsenal u21s kicked off later in the day, playing a Premier League 2 play-off match against Manchester City.

The hosts saw Sverre Nypan’s first-half penalty saved by Tommy Setford, and Andre Harriman-Annous gave Arsenal hope of a shock knockout with a 43rd minute opening goal.

But the second half was all City, and goals from Christian McFarlane, Nypan, and Ryan McAidoo ultimately saw them eliminating the young Gunners 3-1.

Photo via Arsenal Academy on Twitter

As mentioned, the Arsenal u21s have been eliminated from the Premier League 2 play-offs after finishing 14th in the regular season, and that means an early end to their campaign.

As for the u18s, they sit 11th from 15 teams in the u18 Premier League South. Even an improbable five wins in their final five games would put them outside the top four, and likely no higher than sixth.

There are plenty of questions to be asked about Arsenal’s academy coaching at the moment, with the u19s suffering group stage elimination from the UEFA Youth League, the u21s finishing bottom of their EFL Trophy group, and the u18s going out of the FA Youth Cup in the round-of-32.

It’s been an extremely poor season for the u18s, u19s, and u21s on all fronts, whilst Chelsea and Spurs top the u18 PL South, City and United top the u18 PL North, Chelsea, United, and City finished top three in the Premier League 2, and City and United are set to contest the FA Youth Cup final.

Arsenal’s big-six rivals are leading the way in almost every competition available, whilst the Gunners are struggling badly in those same competitions.

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There can be no excuses for such a significant underperformance, even if the academy is still producing the occasional one-off gem like Max Dowman.

Every other top academy is producing first-team quality players and also decent players who can be sold for millions in the transfer market.

If Arsenal want to bring in any money from their academy this summer, it will have to be through selling the first-team ex-youth players like Myles Lewis-Skelly or Ethan Nwaneri. There’s no one behind them capable of generating significant interest while their teams perform so poorly.

Standards have been steadily falling with the Arsenal youth teams over the past few seasons, and they’ve reached a real low now. It needs to be addressed as soon as possible.