Arsenal: Per Mertesacker understands academy value

This week, Per Mertesacker said that he is happy to let talented young players leave Arsenal. Why? Because that is where the realistic value lies, and he is spot on.

Arsenal have always put a keen focus on the development of their young prospects. While this is predominantly with the intention of using these players in the first-team picture at the club, there is a shifting focus of the importance of productive academies in the modern game.

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Thanks to the recent explosion in prices throughout the world, top clubs are now able to sell their young prospects who are unlikely to feature prominently for their teams for decent fees. Liverpool and Chelsea have taken advantage of this in recent years, using the inflated sales of their reserve and young players to fund moves for starters — Dominic Solanke and Jordan Ibe essentially paid for Mohamed Salah, for instance.

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And it seems as though Arsenal are now cottoning onto the financial advantages that having a prolific academy can have. This week, Academy Manager Per Mertesacker was asked about the departing academy graduates, including Alex Iwobi, Xavier Amaechi and Serge Gnabry, the latter the most regrettable of them all. This is what he said:

"“We have, even from our side, academy players going to other countries, other clubs, inside out. So players who have not been playing with the first team but going somewhere else. And we take value… So for us this summer was really positive – you had Alex Iwobi going to Everton. That’s one example. A player that established himself in the first-team <…> for us, it’s then how can we create value out of these players who are part of our academy because, as I said, only a small percentage end up in the first-team at Arsenal.”"

With senior teams as competitive as ever and clubs able to move throughout the world to sign both top-tier talent and young and developing talent — Matteo Guendouzi and Gabriel Martinelli are examples of the latter — the chances that an academy graduate actually goes on to be a major factor in the senior team are extremely slim.

So, the more realistic value of academies is not supplying the first team with talent, however refreshing that is to see when it happens, but rather developing talent to sell on to fund moves for more established, higher-end players.

While this means one or two always slip through the net, as has been the case with Gnabry, Szczesny and even Jeff Reine-Adelaide, to an extent, the freedom to sell also means that reserve players who are never going to play for the senior team can collectively fund players who are. That is just good business.

So expect to see further departures of academy graduates in the future. Because like Iwobi funded moves for Kieran Tierney and David Luiz, so will future stars fund moves for greater first-team contributors. As Mertesacker illustrates, this is where the real value of a modern-day academy lies.