Arsenal: Arsene Wenger’s unfulfilled British core dream renewed

Arsene Wenger had a dream of a British core anchoring the Arsenal squad. That dream failed. But now, two years after his departure, it is being renewed once again.

No one could forget the now infamous ‘British Core’, Arsene Wenger’s dream of building Arsenal around five key British players: Carl Jenkinson, Aaron Ramsey, Kieran Gibbs, Jack Wilshere and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

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All of them were great young players and prospects who were envisioned as the cornerstone of the team. One way or another, each to a different extent, all of them failed. Now, seven years later, the whole experiment is starting again.

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Emile Smith Rowe, Reiss Nelson, Joe Willock, Rob Holding, Calum Chambers, Bukayo Saka and Eddie Nketiah. Seven young English players, who now, under Unai Emery, are receiving first-team opportunities in Premier League games, European matches and domestic cup ties — in Nketiah´s case, lighting the Championship on fire with Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds United.

With Arsenal in the midst of a rebuilding process, enacting a new policy of looking for better value from their investments in transfer windows, it is not a stretch to think that they have a pretty decent core of players who can form the spine of this new team. This class could even be better than the previous one, perhaps not speaking in terms of talent (at least not now), but better equipped to build a team in this modern era of football with a greater focus on speed, pressing and spacing.

In Saka and Nelson, Arsenal have two potentially elite wingers with enough speed and dribbling ability to attack with and without the ball and relentless energy to press opponents into submission. Chambers and Holding have shown leadership qualities, are improving as defenders, and are at the perfect age to develop and mature together as partners at centre-back.

Smith Rowe has the technical ability to play as an attacking, creative midfielder, as well as the hustle and energy to support the attack from a deeper position as a box-to-box player. Willock combines discipline and football IQ to organise and execute a team’s gameplan, while Nketiah has shown an instinct in front of the goal extremely rare for a player of his age. Heck, all of this is without mentioning Ainsley Maitland-Niles — I think of him as a consolidated first-team player already.

In a league like the Premier League, which has such a high concentration of wonderfully and uniquely talented players from all over the world, having a group of English players that can genuinely rival that talent is a luxury that many of the other big teams could only dream of.

It remains to be seen how these players develop. It is not linear and to expect them to take the league by storm is a little naive. Nevertheless, the makings of a bright, British era are here. Even with the Wenger era over, his dream of a team built of the bulk of English players is a possibility very much alive.