Arsenal: The wonderful revolution of youth

Arsenal have utterly overhauled their squad. As the new season unfolds, the Unai Emery revolution is a youthful one, and that is a wonderful thing.

Arsenal have played four matches so far this season. In their first, against Newcastle United, they started three academy graduates, Joe Willock, Reiss Nelson and Ainsley Maitland-Niles. They also started three under-21s, including Willock, Nelson and Matteo Guendouzi.

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Next week, they started the same three academy products and the same three under-21 players. Then away at Anfield, arguably the toughest game of the Premier League season, only Nelson was dropped from the starting XI. Fast forward to last weekend’s North London Derby and Guendouzi and Maitland-Niles again started. All of this does not include several under-25 players, including Calum Chambers, Dani Ceballos, Lucas Torreira and Nicolas Pepe.

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What has been made clear is that head coach Unai Emery is fully committed to the youth movement that he was tasked with overseeing when he was hired to succeed Arsene Wenger last summer. There has been a noticeable and significant shift in the make-up of the first-team squad, and much of that comes from the eagerness of Emery to turn towards a younger swathe of players.

11 senior players departed the club this season. Their average age was 30. Contrast that to the six that arrived at an average age of 23. The Premier League squads were announced this week. Arsenal have the youngest average age of them all at 25.1 years old. All the statistics, all the evidence is there. The Gunners have, very swiftly and very efficiently, moved to a younger squad.

And that is a wonderful thing. As modern football dictates faster styles on the pitch and savvier management off it, having young players that possess both the energy to play at high intesity for 90 minutes and strong re-sale value is absolutely essential for any football club looking to assemble a top-level squad.

You see, while it is encouraging to see many of these young players break into the team, the benefits do not end with purely finding a cheaper solution in an increasingly explosive transfer market. Because of the rapid rise in prices in the last two or three years, young players hold their value far more than they did in the past. A talented 21-year-old can now fetch north of £20 million, whether they have played extensive senior football or not.

This is where Arsenal’s youth revolution is so beneficial. Not only do the likes of Guendouzi, Nelson, Willock and Smith Rowe provide potential solutions at key positions for no transfer fees and cheap wages, but if they do not develop as expected and they fall short of the necessary standard, they can still be sold for a sizable fee, that money then reinvested in other talent.

The Gunners are now the youngest team in the Premier League. And with another crop of prospects burgeoning, they will only get younger. That is a wonderful thing indeed.