‘The players are on the floor in the changing room but youth football is never make or break,” Jack Wilshere reflected. “It’s important that they continue to develop but whether they can make it to the first team will be down to them.”
It has not been two years since Arsenal’s Under-18s were thrashed 5-1 by West Ham at the Emirates in the FA Youth Cup final but the former England midfielder’s prediction has come true. Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly were two of the players who had to be consoled that night by their manager, Wilshere, and both are established as first-team regulars even though they are still eligible to play in the competition that has served as a springboard for so many young stars.
Arsenal are back at the Emirates to face Manchester United in the quarter-finals on Friday night. Although they have not won the Youth Cup since a team including Wilshere and managed by Steve Bould did in 2009, Adam Birchall – who became the under-18s coach in October after Wilshere’s departure for Norwich – insists it is all part of the process.
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“This is a very young group compared to recent years,” he says. “I think we’re the youngest in the competition. We’ve got 15-, 16-year-olds in the squad. We spoke about it in the last game against Fulham: that this is an opportunity to go and play at the stadium. We knew we’d play at the stadium if we won the game.
“It really is just a different development tool from a staff perspective. Obviously, we want to be relentless. We want to try and win every game. Our aim is to win as much as possible and that’s important at these ages – that we develop that mindset. But it’s just a different environment for us to go and test them in front of 10,000 people; that’s separate from what they usually get on matchday.”
Such is Arsenal’s inexperience that Max Dowman – an attacking midfielder who has trained with the first team – was not old enough to play in the competition until he turned 15 on New Year’s Eve. The midfielder Kyran Thompson, another 15-year-old who was signed from West Ham’s academy in October and attends the same school that Nwaneri went to – St John’s in Enfield – is also expected to start against United.
“They’ve got the talent,” says Birchall, who came through Arsenal’s Hale End academy and played for Wycombe, Barnet and Gillingham before returning to the club as a coach in 2016. “They can do it. That’s why we ask them to be involved in this, because it’s right for their development.”
The process, he emphasises, is “much more complex than being top of the 18s league”. The former striker says: “My job is to develop young people and help them with what they want to do. When you’re dealing with children, it has to be a selfless thing. These young people are growing up in the world and they want stuff and they want help. I think where the line gets blurry is when adults start putting themselves before lads … You need to put them first.”
Arsenal cover the fees of almost £21,000 a year at St John’s, where Thompson and the forward Joshua Sesay last year became the first players to study there as part of an official educational partnership ratified by the Premier League. The club has also been known to send young players who have been getting a lot of attention on social media to do charity work in an attempt to keep their feet on the ground.
“They live in a world where they’re told what they want to hear, some of them, and not what they need to hear,” Birchall says. “When I grew up here at the academy, it was constantly what you need to hear. It wasn’t sugar-coated. When you have players like Myles and Ethan that are currently pushing out ahead, treating them no different to the other lads – because the other lads are just as talented in different ways – allows them to keep grounded.”
Lewis-Skelly went to Aldenham School in Hertfordshire through a separate partnership with Arsenal and is studying for a Spanish AS-level. Birchall reveals that the 18-year-old had texted him that morning asking for his thoughts on “detachment theory”.
“I need to research it,” Birchall admits. “But that is about being a role model. If I’m a young player and I’m looking at him, he’s showing what being a strong young Gunner is about. It’s about that constant strive to better yourself and he’s a good example. You know, he’s really, really into learning.”
Two Arsenal academy players have joined United in the past five months: Chido Obi-Martin in October and Ayden Heaven in February. Obi-Martin was handed his senior debut this month by Ruben Amorim and may not feature on Friday despite scoring a hat-trick in the previous round against Chelsea. The Danish striker could prove to be the one who got away after three years at Arsenal.
Whatever Friday’s result, Birchall expects the success of Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly to ensure that the Hale End pipeline continues to flow to the first team. “We’re all super proud of them,” he says. “I know for a fact that they’re really inspired by it. I think it just shows that it’s possible. You see not just their technical skills and their ability to transfer, but their ability to go into a first-team environment and show their personalities and connect with the first-team players.
“We’ve got really talented players throughout the system and it just creates other opportunities for our talented players to step up and show what they’ve got. And I think that’s one of the benefits of what’s been happening when players are getting the trust of the manager here and it gives opportunity to the lads underneath to develop as well.”
