Has the academy’s technical standard finally caught up with what is needed to succeed at Arsenal?

I’ve got to say, watching the Arsenal Reserves game yesterday, you can now see how much of a difference the fact that the academy has been around for a while now has made to the quality that we are now seemingly producing.

Yes, before we had the likes of Bentley, Cole, Sidwell and Harper, but generally speaking players who played for Arsenal have not been of a very high standard. Even the last time our reserves were winning matches, the only successful players from that reserve team were bought in from abroad - players like Larsson, Lupoli and Bendtner, with only Muamba impressing from the English side of things. Most of the other players have now dropped off the radar completely, except perhaps Gilbert who struggles on with injury and attitude problems at Arsenal.

This year though, all the players seem far more promising than ever before, particularly the English players, because the bought in players are always very good simply because they have been coached to play football from a very young age in an exceptional way. An ideal example of this is Nacer Barazite, with the young Dutchman again impressing against a fairly poor West ham team with his mix of brilliant technique and great football intelligence. But now you can see that the younger generation of English footballers, those coming through from the Under 18s to the reserves just now, are clearly more capable than ever before.

The likes of Wilshere, Thomas, Watt and Frimpong are showing that they can now make the step up to playing the Arsenal brand of football far more easily than any group of youngsters since Wengers arrival. Of course, this is only one part of what is needed for them to succeed, but it is at least looking far more promising, highlighted by Wenger’s previous claim this season that we have 13/14 year olds who have nothing more to learn technically. With this background work, we can now hope to see far more English youngsters at our club.

Jack Wilshere yesterday was brilliant, and got easily the best ovation I have heard for a player at Underhill for the reserves when he was finally brought off to give him time to recuperate before helping to lead Arsenal to the Under 18s Final by beating Aston Villa on Saturday. He showed that he has exactly what it takes to be an Arsenal player, tormenting the West Ham defence from the right hand side, either by ghosting past players, finding the right attacking pass or holding onto the ball under pressure. The watching Arsene Wenger must have been overjoyed to see that the academy is starting to give him exactly what he wants. And that was before the 16 year old Englishman curled the ball exquisitely past the keeper from 25 yards….

Jay Thomas has proved throughout this season for the reserves and while captaining the academy team, that he is has the uncommon English attribute of being a ball playing centre half, a defender who can fill in any position across the pitch and do a good job because he has the all round game that Arsenal’s almost total football style at times requires. Yesterday he out-Diaby’d the French international alongside him for presence and retaining the ball, showing that he could become a first teamer at Arsenal. The only question would be in which particular position his future lies.

The futures definitely bright, all we need to do now is to ensure the present is just as promising.