As reported by James in The Athletic (£) last week, free agent Jonathan Dinzeyi has signed for Arsenal and will compete for a place in the club’s under-23s.
The defender, who mostly operates as a centre-back, was recently released by Sp*rs.
Dinzeyi is the Academy’s fourth recruit in the space of a week. The club has also confirmed deals for George Lewis, Salah-Eddine and Tim Akinola.
In addition to loan moves, there could be a few permanent exits from the Academy this summer.
We’re waiting to see what the future holds for strikers Folarin Balogun, 19, and Sam Greenwood, 18. The former was linked with Brentford a few weeks ago and the latter is, according to The Athletic’s Leeds correspondent Phil Hay, a target for Marcelo Bielsa.
Any news on balogun?
I think we’re waiting to see what the future holds…
I understand that Chelsea has made a success of bringing young players through their academy and flogging them to smaller clubs everywhere. Is this what we are aiming to emulate now? If so it’s about time.
Chelsea have been amazing at it. They managed to flog De Bruyne, Salah and Lukaku. Genius.
Their overall record is good though -they are certainly better at it than we have been.
Were they products of Chelsea’s academy?
No. Just any excuse to remind people of that.
Quite. On the whole, Chelsea sell well at all levels and that’s something we should aim to emulate. Whether we’re bringing in the younger players now to sell on, or whether we aren’t producing enough quality players ourselves, is another matter. We’ve a poor record of letting promising youngsters leave too early though – often at a big cost to the club. The trick, as in comedy, is in the timing!
Good points. Adding to that, weren’t De Bruyne and Lukaku Mourinho rejects? Mourinho as in the sulky bully who’d put his own children on a transfer list for any minor offence.
Best comment ever
those two strikers, sign them up then loan them out. Selling them at age 20/21 might fetch you more than 19 or 18 irrespective of how the loan goes
Yeah true, but Balogun is rumoured to want to leave to get first team playing time. The club want him to stay, but he’s only got one year left on his contract, so supposedly we’ve agreed to let him go now.
Seems crazy to me though that Balogun would want to leave Arsenal at age 19, instead of staying and doing a loan. There’s no rush at that age, and we’re a team in transition so you never quite know who might leave and what opportunities might come up.
Very strange indeed. I wonder who are his advisors in this regard? Perhaps there’s more to it and they are thinking for their own pockets more than the overall interest of the player. His insistence on moving now makes little or no sense at all. He should extend his contract and go on loan for more game time (if play time is the actual reason for the demand).
I see that the Athletic is reporting that Leeds is likely to sign Sam Greenwood off us for something in the “six figure range.”
Seems like a rather paltry sum for a young guy who seems fairly promising. Anyone have any idea why this would happen? (Out of contract in a year, etc.?) Can’t say I’d be too pleased to see both him and Balogun leaving this summer.
For real?
I thought i remembered Jeorge Bird saying a while ago that he was one of the young players we were trying to get to sign a new deal. Could be that he’s into the final 12 months.
When young players decide to leave a big club like Arsenal against the wishes of the club itself you can always sense the influence of an agent.
I’m sure that an agent was behind Greenwood’s decision to leave Sunderland at 16 and join Arsenal in the first place and now at 18 It looks like he’s at it again, although Jeorge Bird did suggest that he might be homesick…
He’s homesick. Has never been settled since moving down from Sunderland, apparently.