Former Arsenal youth player Sanchez Watt has heaped praise on academy boss Per Mertesacker for the excellent work he has done over the last few years.
The mood around Arsenal since the start of last season has almost always been negative. Our new signings haven’t really set the world on fire, our results haven’t been great and our performances have been far from good as well.
That has resulted in very little optimism in and around the Emirates. However, if there’s one area that deserves immense credit, it’s our academy for producing incredible young talents as well as tying many of them down to new contracts.
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Arsenal academy boss Mertesacker deserves a lot of credit
Since Mertesacker took over as the head of our academy, Arsenal’s first team has seen the likes of Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe and Folarin Balogun among others emerge. All three of them were handed new long-term contracts as well, which is a huge compliment to our academy.
Apart from his great work there, Mertesacker managed to convince the likes of Kido Taylor-Hart and Arthur Okonkwo to put pen to paper. He played a big part in signing Omar Rekik as well, which just shows how good the BFG has been for us.
Former Gunner Sanchez Watt is a very vocal Arsenal fan on Twitter these days. He took to the platform this week to show his appreciation for the head of Arsenal’s academy.
Watt is right, the media will never highlight this. There has barely been any news about the German World Cup winner’s excellent work over the years, but almost every Arsenal fan is more than aware of what the BFG is doing, and we’re all delighted.
Arsenal’s current first-team is already extremely young. So, it will be a huge challenge for everyone at the academy to develop players who can break through like Saka and Smith Rowe did over the last two years.
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However, with Mertesacker at the helm, we should be excited to see what the future holds for the likes of Charlie Patino, Miguel Azeez, Dan Ballard and others.
