Is selling an important aspect of Project Youth?

In short, yes (at least in my opinion)!

After the Willian saga, Edu and Arteta Co. decided to move to a Dortmund model aka Project Youth where you buy young, talented players and develop them into world class players. In last transfer window, we got 6 first teamers costing around 150m in total – Ramsdale (GK), Tomiyasu (RB), Tavares (LB backup), Sambi (MF understudy), Ben White (CB) and Odegaard (CAM). Four of these players were starters in last season for a good number of games.

We are in another transfer window of Project Youth and so far has bought Matt Turner (GK backup, Leno’s replacement), Marquinhos (RW / LW), Jesus (CF), Vieira (MF). We have shown interest in Tielemans, Raphinha, and Lisandro Martinez, all of which fits the youth project.

Bar Jesus, it can be said that we are accumulating cheap and young players whom we believe have chances to come up good. Jesus is a proven winner but is still only 25 years old so you can count him too if you want.

We have some of our own young guns showing their worth on the biggest stage – Saka, ESR, Martinelli, Gabriel Magalhaes, Eddie N.

There are three possible reasons why we can end up a situation where we would have to sell.

1. Return on investment – Kroenke’s are funding these transfers, there’s no doubt about it. We used to sit on a pile of cash but we have been in loss from quite some time now. 150+ millions last season and almost 80m till now this transfer window? It’s not free money and club would have to repay it to KSE. We have been losing out of Champions League from 6 years, haven’t won much which in return affects the sponsorship deals and merchandise sales. Josh Kroenke talks ambitious and has backed up his ambition with these funding but at some point he would expect it back. It’s a business for Americans.
2. An offer we can’t refuse – Similar to the Coutinho situation at Liverpool. Someone comes to the club with ridiculous money for one of the players and we feel we can achieve a replacement in less or use it for a rebuild / cover other areas of the pitch.
3. Player’s ambition – More like the situation at Manchester City. Young players have ambitions, they want to win things on one hand and earn a big fat contract on the other. Some just get bored at one place and need a change to keep themselves happy. Some of them wants to be a regular and makes their own legacy. Gabriel Jesus has won 4 Premier League titles in his 5 years at City at the age of 25, he can spend another 5 years accumulating some more trophies under Pep but he wants to be ‘the’ guy at Arsenal than ‘one of the’ guy at Manchester City. Sterling will probably move to Chelsea with similar reasons. Money is involved without saying. This can, and will happen at Arsenal in couple of years.

All of these are genuine reasons! We have to find a way to minimize the effect it can have on our team structure and the club.

Investment in young players comes with a risk. Some of them won’t cut it. The clubs needs to be smarter and identify them in order to make a sale. We were getting 20 odd million for AMN last year and we didn’t encash it, that was foolish. I don’t think he is going to get any important game time and no one is coming with 20m again for him. It’s too early to judge Lokonga and Tavares but we will know how successful they can be this season. Cut out the losses or make whatever profit you can make on players you think won’t be a part of playing XI.

At some point, we will be made an offer for one of our stars. Someone at the club would have to decide which is more beneficial, to keep the player or replace and use the rest of money to strengthen other area of pitch. Similar to Coutinho situation, if we happen to buy a Salah, Mane or a VVD with that money, it’s a fair deal.

For players who shows ambitions which do not fall in line to the club’s interest, we need to let them go at the right time for right money. Lets not make it a Koscielny (remember him?) situation.

We are emotional beings. All of this reasons sounds fair and selling out (of other clubs) sounds good in hindsight but when the time comes, we would be angry.

I would be more angry if we manage to create another Guendouzi, Mavropanos or Maitland-Niles scenario.

I would love to read your opinion in comment section. I know it’s a controversial topic and I would get some flak but hey London is Red respects every opinion!