Arsenal: Bukayo Saka doesn’t need the red carpet treatment

Arsenal have a ridiculously talented lad in Bukayo Saka, but that doesn’t mean he should be rolling into training on the red carpet treatment.

Arsenal‘s youth system is paying dividends in a big way, just in Bukayo Saka alone. The young winger has been a tremendous surprise to the season, not in how talented he is, but in how well he’s been able to stick in the first team and make a consistent difference.

He’s near cementing himself in the starting XI despite the surplus of attacking options, all because he seized on his opportunity and did not let it go.

I have said it before and I’ve said it again—Unai Emery should be pulling out all the stops to keep Saka in the XI until he falls off the pace. Move people out of the way to keep him in the team as long as he keeps performing. It’s that simple.

But that said, it’s not like we should be rolling out the red carpet for him. The big bugaboo this week is that Saka doesn’t yet have a place in the senior team dressing room.

He’s still suiting up with the academy stars across the hall.

It’s being touted as a bit unjust, but for starters, no one could have expected that Saka would be this crucial to the first team picture when they set up the dressing room at the start of the season. And while Mesut Ozil is certainly on his way out, and some may see the club’s treatment of him as an indignity, moving him out of the dressing room would actually be an indignity. And a potentially disastrous one.

If there’s no room for Saka in the first team locker room, then it gives him something more to strive for. It gives him more to fight to obtain. More to want. It’s crazy that an 18-year-old is already on the cusp of being a must-start, and not that I think this could ever happen to a man with a work ethic like his, but you have to always challenge your players and give them something to reach for.

This is another thing. We don’t need to clear out the room just to accommodate the young man. He knows the rules and traditions. He will get there.

In the mean time, let’s try to enjoy his performances on the pitch and forget about where he put his kit on at.