Arsenal: Per Mertesacker more important than ever

Per Mertesacker is the head of the Arsenal academy. Given the resource limitations in the transfer market, his role in ushering in the Unai Emery era is more important than ever.

Unai Emery is attempting to overhaul the Arsenal squad. In the final years of the Arsene Wenger reign, the quality of the personnel at the club had deteriorated substantially, and with Emery’s arrival, a new wave of players was ushered in with him.

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The make-up of the current team is very different from that under Wenger. Of top 10 players that have played in the most Premier League minutes this season, only three played under Wenger for more than a year. And of those three, two, Shkodran Mustafi and Granit Xhaka, could be eased out of the starting line-up this summer.

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As Emery continues his overhaul of the playing squad, there will be a very clear limitation on the work that he can do. Arsenal cannot compete with the elite clubs in the Premier League and across Europe in terms of the money they invest in their player recruitment. The hundreds of millions that will be shed this summer cannot be matched by the Gunners, even with Champions League qualification.

As such, Emery and Raul Sanllehi will have to take a different approach, a more measured, money-conscience one. And that, I believe, will heavily include the academy.

This week, Per Mertesacker spoke in detail about the Arsenal academy with Goal.com. You can read the full interview here, but I wanted to highlight one particular sentence that he ends the interview with:

"“It is great that the club believes in the academy so we can promote and develop youngsters who are going to challenge the first team, that’s really the target.”"

I believe that Sanllehi and Emery recognise the limitations that they will be dealing with in the transfer market this summer and in future windows. And I also believe that they understand that they cannot go toe-to-toe with the likes of Manchester City and Real Madrid, trying to sign the superstars of world football for fees and wages that they cannot afford.

If the Gunners are to challenge the elite of the Premier League and Europe under Emery, they will have to go about it in a different manner. For Mertesacker and the academy, the target, I believe, is two-fold. Like with Alex Iwobi and Hector Bellerin and Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Aaron Ramsey, all of which have played more than 1000 league minutes this season, it will be first and foremost about acquiring and developing players who can challenge for a place in the first-team squad. This is the cheapest way to round out a team.

But even if the players produced are not ready for senior football, as Chelsea are proving with their loan army and as Liverpool have illustrated with the likes of Jordan Ibe and Dominic Solanke, there is still great value in buying young players and selling them on for a higher price. These moves can help fund higher profile transfers, if completed on a large enough scale.

The Arsenal academy will be critical to the Unai Emery era, both in providing first-team players that he can use at the club and generating funds for more elaborate acquisitions. And if that is the case, Per Mertesacker, as its head, will be more important than ever.