According to transfer guru and peddler of Twitter ads, Fabrizio Romano, Lino Sousa is set to join Aston Villa in a permanent deal this month.
🚨🟣🔵 EXCLUSIVE: Aston Villa agree deal to sign Lino Sousa from Arsenal on permanent move, here we go!
Agreement in place for 2005 born fullback who’s set to complete medical in the next hours.
Rangers, Galatasaray and Juve were keen but Sousa set to join #AVFC. pic.twitter.com/iHAOQxY0kh
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) January 31, 2024
The 19 year old left-back began his career at West Brom before joining the Arsenal Academy in 2022, and now looks set to return to the midlands.
He has trained with the first team at times, and last season was part of the squad for the 3-0 win away at Brentford, but he has yet to have any involvement in competitive action for the senior team.
Reports suggest his contract expires this summer, and it might be a case that Arsenal are willing to let him go now in order to earn some return before a free transfer in the summer – although any fee at this point is set to be minimal anyway.
The transfer window closes tomorrow at 6pm. We usually do a live blog, but this time around we’ll just cover the stories here on Arseblog News, as there’s little chance of anything particularly interesting happening.
This is so disappointing. He’s a fantastic talent & when people talk about Arsenal not having young players aged 18-19 who are ready to step up, he is a prime example of why that is wrong. The isn’t a Bradley Ibrahim, he’s a proper player. We’ve spent most of the season over-playing Zinchenko, blundering around seeing whether Kiwior can do a job, I just don’t see why we couldn’t give Sousa some minutes in lower risk games, eg the dead rubber in PSV. I genuinely believe that we need to keep the pipeline open for our own talent and this… Read more »
How absurd. ESR (10), Saka (7), and Nketiah (14) all played a part in our win last night, in the Premier League. For Arsenal, with those numbers on their backs. I think the Academy players know there is a future for them at Arsenal if they can reach the level, but very few of them will reach the level. It has always been the case that we will say goodbye to several handfuls of talented youngsters for every one player to join the first team, and we usually get our decisions right. I daresay Arteta and Edu and all of… Read more »
ESR – debut under Freddie Ljungberg.
Saka – debut under Unai Emery.
Nketiah – debut under Arsene Wenger.
Yeah, they are all academy players, but all were already around when Arteta took charge, the main problem seems to be thinking they are never ready for a first chance…
Sometimes you have to miss before you hit, and that’s OK, the supporters will always back giving youngsters a shot in decided games or meaningless fixtures, and if they don’t work out at least we increase some of the value
Arteta is building a team of champions, not producing a shop window. We won a difficult away fixture yesterday, but based on fan comments online, you’d have thought we lost. Supporters are grumpy fuckers in the world of social media (much worse than when Wenger was here), and as the players have said before, they read that shit. Arteta and co. know how to manage young talent. Look at Martinelli. As you point out, a debut is largely meaningless. Arteta is the one that signed those three players to new contracts, and gave them the faith and coaching to be… Read more »
Again, absurd analogy with what a few people say on twitter during a match having any relevance to what we’re talking about here. Arteta’s job is to manage the club, a self-sustaining club. So far he’s been incredibly reliant on loans from Stan, loans that we will have to pay back one day one presumes. How he looks after and develops talent and ensures that they are sold on at a maximum is absolutely central to our FFP standing and overall sure-footing. What he has done to develop Saka is of course excellent, but we’re also talking a generational talent… Read more »
Players state all the time that they read abuse and praise on social media, and it has an impact on them. This would likely be particularly true of younger players. And it wasn’t so long ago that our ex-captain, Xhaka, had a rather public falling out with the fans in the stadium. The things we say, the way we criticize, matters to them. The club does everything it can to protect them. Arteta inherited a mess; he’s cleared that out, at great expense, and the process is well underway to return this club to the top (both on the pitch… Read more »
Not sure why you even bother bro. So many clueless fans online who think they know how to manage a football club. Exasperating!
I’m only really talking about giving youngsters the odd few minutes here and there, something to cling on to that they do have more than zero chance. I’m certainly not saying that we should fill our first team with the whole of Hale End. We actually did it with Nwaneri and who knows what difference this made to him signing his new deal. I love that the bar is high but, given we are self-sustaining and can’t forever keep relying on Stan’s loans, we’re missing a massive trick in not raising the value of our players by giving them game… Read more »
I get it, but these minutes are largely meaningless in the end. I think if we were a team that was winning our matches weekly 3 or 4-nil, we’d see more academy players getting that glimpse, but we are not and thus are focused on getting better and using the entire 95 minutes to do that. Arteta includes youth players in first team training all the time, brings them to games when he has an expanded matchday squad, and surely gives them the coaching and encouragement needed to know they belong. That is all far more important than 3 minutes… Read more »
Spot on. The absolute rote predictability of people thumbing shit down that doesn’t align with a favourable portrayal of the management.
What is absurd is countering a comment about playing time with shirt numbers of players who made their debuts 4-5 years ago (under different managers).
As of last night, they were still wearing those numbers, and all three signed their contracts with Arteta’s arm around the shoulder. The same arm that continues to guide them everyday in training and believes that they are worthy of the numbers on the back of their shirt and the crest on the front.
The academy players that see them starting and scoring and contributing to wins every week know what that means, to the core.
I’ve never got this argument about who gave them their debut. Why does that matter? They were all established as proper first team players by Arteta, not before. If Arteta left tomorrow and a new manager came in and established Nwanari as a first team player would we really say “Oh new manager deserves no credit as it was actually Arteta who gave him his debut”?
Name one academy player who has advanced under Arteta. Then compare that short list with Klopp and Guardiola.
Everybody (myself included) praises Klopp for blooding youngsters, but he does this taking the risk of filling the squad with inexperienced players. The young scousers gained lots of experience last season while Thiago, Keita, Fabinho etc were out, but Liverpool are currently playing in the Europa League because, regardless of their talent, those guys weren’t good enough yet last season. The same thing nearly happened the season after they won the league because Van Dijk crocked his ACL and the only cover they had were youth players.
Name one academy player who has advanced under Arteta? How about Saka?
Academy player – tick
Advanced under Arteta – well given he had never played a first team game at right-wing until Arteta played him there and he is now one of the best in the world in that position that’s a big tick for me.
Of course, Saka is the answer to everything at Arsenal. Emery gave him his debut (something Arteta finds impossible for almost any academy player these days) and for sure Arteta developed him wonderfully.
Saka is the answer to everything, everywhere all at once. 🙂
Please let this mean we’re buying Hato 🙏🙏🙏
Transfermarket had Sousa valued at €2million.
We’re doomed I tell ya, doooomed!! If the player wants to leave then what can you do, dont want an unhappy player around the gaff. Arteta has set the bar high and I’m happy with that!
After last night Arsenal should think about a cheeky bid for that barrel chested Forest forward who always scores against us.
Can’t complain about this. We took him from West Brom.
Looks as if Okonkwo has signed permanently for Wrexham
Huh that’s a shame in some ways – at one point seemed he had real potential. Still, a goal keeper’s career is long. How old was Emi before he made it to the first team? 28 I think. Sadly I fear he was a twat long before that.
Good luck to Okonkwo anyway.
Boy I can’t recall as less active transfer market not only for Arsenal, but for the PL in general. I know we are limited in what we can do with the FFP rules, but is a bit disappointing we likely aren’t going to do anything to improve the squad. Of course getting Partey and Tomiyasu back will be like new signings and ESR actually getting to play significant minutes is like a new signing as well. Really hope we can address the striker position in the Summer.
Partey will be like a new signing unti his injury 2 weeks later
He never got injured for Athletico. It really is a phenomenon of his late career st Arsenal.
And the fact we played him more than the average 65 minutes per game that he played at Atleti.
For everyone that says “why do you care, it’s not you’re money”, this is the answer.
And now we have Duberry wanted by Newcastle. Arteta casually throwing away a sustainable future
I can think of exactly one player who left when still young and then showed he could have played for Arsenal. That is Gnabry, and he left because he wanted to play in Germany, not because Arsenal undervalued him. Willock and Iwobi were sold for good money after both played regularly for the first team. We had four Academy players in the squad for Forest, with two starting and one coming on. Are there really many other top teams that beat this?
Not much we can do to stop him leaving if that’s the case. You (rightly) can’t make a player sign a long term contract before they’re 18 and we can’t promise him playing time next season because as talented as he is we have many players who are currently better than him, so there’s a decent chance he’ll leave. Hopefully he goes to Newcastle or another UK club who would have to pay a compensation fee and % of any future sale.
Academy football is about getting players to a level where they can just about compete in the men’s game and then hoping for an opportunity to come through. Almost every top 6 academy graduate’s Wikipedia entry has something like this from Alexander Arnold’s: “regular right-back Clyne suffered a serious back injury which afforded Alexander-Arnold the opportunity to rotate with Joe Gomez”. Smith Rowe came through because we cocked up the Aouar transfer and didn’t have a #10. Saka benefitted from an injury crisis at LB and our record signing RW being absolutely dogshit. Martinelli probably wouldn’t be as good as… Read more »
I do not understand the narrative that so many people believe in, that Arteta is building a “team of champions” and therefore there is no place for inexperienced players. This is a Catch 22 situation — how can you have experienced youngsters, if you don’t give them experience? There are only two answers that I can think of: either our current crop of youngsters is really bad, or simply not developing youngsters is a trait of Arteta’s character that we have to swallow as part of his overall character. On the first possibility: I do not believe that we in… Read more »
@arseblog: I posted a comment few minutes ago but I do not see it. Was I moderated?
Ok, I see it posted now above. Thanks!