Arsenal: New British core must learn from mistakes of old British core

Arsenal promoted Eddie Nketiah, Joe Willock, Reiss Nelson and Emile Smith Rowe into the first team. To succeed, this new British core must now learn from the mistakes of the old one.

Arsenal are a club known for their focus on the development of young players. Throughout the Arsene Wenger era, a key tenet of the organisation was to bleed prospects from the academy into the senior squad and prioritise this process above external recruitment in the transfer window.

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Fans have, as a result, always looked towards young players coming through the system as a great source of hope and excitement. So, when a crop of new talent blooms and looks set to their places in the senior squad, it is obviously an extremely joyous occasion. And that is very much the case at the club at present.

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The Gunners are welcoming in one of the brightest crops of young talent that they have ever seen come through Hale End, this week promoting for exceptionally interesting and talented players: striker Eddie Nketiah, winger Reiss Nelson, and midfielders Joe Willock and Emile Smith Rowe. It is a core group around which the future of the first team will be built, as Ivan Gazidis, Unai Emery and Raul Sanllehi have all consistently said throughout the past year.

The quartet is reminiscent of a former British core at the club, consistent of Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Kieran Gibbs, Carl Jenkinson and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Wenger was a great admirer of their talents and potential, but due to several different factors, some of them controllable and others less so, none ever really fulfilled their future as was hoped, and, if Jenkinson departs this summer, as is expected, all five will have come and gone.

This new British core, although it has not been dubbed that like the former group was, must recognise the mistakes that were made by their predecessors and learn from them. Venturing down the same windy, weeded path only leads to a short-lived, underwhelming career, and that is what everyone, from the players themselves to the club and the fans, is desperate to avoid.

Not overworking their bodies at a young age, as Wilshere did, so that they struggle with injuries. Failing to secure a natural position like Oxlade-Chamberlain and Ramsey, thus falling out of the starting XI because no particular role had been mastered. Failing to work hard enough, as Jenkinson was accused. Or just getting horrendously unlucky with injuries.

There are plenty of mistakes that the players and the club made as they worked their way from teenagers into the senior squad, and if Arsenal could go back and start again with the original British core, I am sure they and the core themselves would do things very differently. But that is what mistakes are for. To learn from them and to develop.

With this new crop, Emery and his coaching staff cannot afford to make the same errors that Wenger did. Similarly, the players too must recognise the history and adapt as a result of it. Mistakes are there to be learned from, and Arsenal and their British core have plenty.