Why missing out on Jeremy Monga is much bleaker than Arsenal fans feared at first

Arsenal are set to miss out on signing Jeremy Monga from Leicester City as the youngster is reported to be joining Manchester City, but the failure to bring him to the club is much bleaker than fans first thought.

The Gunners had been interested in acquiring the Foxes' star's services for some time and were in talks with the League One side for a lengthy period, but after no breakthrough was found, City swooped in and have now agreed to sign him with an official announcement imminent.

Some supporters may look at missing out on Monga as a minor setback in building the academy while others are clearly realising the club have let a big opportunity to enhance the youth setup slip by, but the failure to sign the 16-year-old is much worse for the club than anyone first thought.

Arsenal missing out on Jeremy Monga is much bleaker than fans thought

Arsenal's academy and youth setup is set for a major overhaul this summer with Per Mertesacker departing his role as Academy Manager and Pascal De Maesschalck joining from Strasbourg in August to become Academy Director.

With that change in leadership, Andrea Berta & Co. looked to be hard at work to begin improving the setup that has seen the likes of Bukayo Saka, Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ethan Nwaneri and Max Dowman break through into the first team in the past decade.

Signing Monga seemed to be the first step in doing so. While he has appeared over 30 times for Leicester's senior team, he likely would have been brought into Hale End initially as one of the brightest prospects in English football.

However, a failure to reach an agreement eventually saw the Gunners miss out on the young talent, who has now joined Man City. Granted, his former manager Enzo Maresca, who worked with Monga during his time at Leicester, played an influential role in the deal, but it is still poor work from Arsenal.

As the embedded X post by Next Generation Arsenal suggests, the potential signing of Monga seemed to represent the Gunners operating an aggressive strategy in their recruitment of English youth talent, but to miss out on his signing to one of their biggest rivals is very poor.

Despite certain players coming into the first team, signing or keeping hold of English prospects has been an issue for the North Londoners in recent times, and that has seen their academy status diminish slightly in comparison to the likes of City, Tottenham and Chelsea.

Arsenal are Premier League champions, but failing to sign Monga due to lowballing by £3/4million for a player who was reportedly keen to join is not the way a club looking to retain the title should be acting in the transfer market.

Their inability to secure his services shows they're clearly not at the point where they can get signings over the line, a hint that the recruitment team now need to show that aggressive stance when fighting to sign players.

If the Gunners can now go on and do some brilliant business in the window, both for senior and youth players, then missing out on Monga will be quickly forgotten, but if they don't, that failure will loom over them for a long time.

Arteta's side need to demonstrate their status in the transfer market, especially when looking to sign talented players. If Arsenal want to keep their academy to a high standard, they must be prepared to act like champions and pay the price.

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