YOUTH SERIES: Charlie Patino—the Next Frenkie De Jong?
(Retweet for others to see and read).
17-year-old academy star, Charlie Patino, has begun to stir waves of excitement among Arsenal fans. Regarded as the 'best player to have ever walked through Hale End' by Arsenal's academy chief, Patino is already a regular in first team training.
We speak to one of Twitter's
informal soccer experts and ask him to help contextualize the hype. Who is Charlie Patino? Is the hype justified? Should Arsenal fans remain excited?
AI (@nonewthing) will take us through Patino's background, position, talent and future.
It's not actually been very bad, has it? Pepe for the exaggerated and unforgivable fee of 72 million has been the worst. Sokratis should have been 6 or 4M less. Torreira and Saliba are just... odd.
We've just been acquiring deadwood players, is the problem.
AN ANALYSIS THREAD.
All of the players we acquired in 2018 have either left or should be leaving soon.
2019: out of 8 1st team players that arrived, 4 have left! Out of the remaining 4, 1 has not even played for us. And Nicolas Pepe, the biggest investment, has been the biggest flop for the price.
2020: Same story. Out of the 9 players that arrived, 3 have already left and 3 will be moved on if an offer for them arrives.
2021 has seen a remarkable turn of recruitment: all of the 5 players invested in are young, capable and very experienced. All 5 should stay in all events
With Arsenal defensively worrying, fans are wondering about the decision of the club to loan William Saliba out for a third year to Ligue 1 whilst spending 50 million on Ben White.
To reveal the thinking behind this decision, we spoke to one of Twitter's informal soccer experts.
AI (@nonewthing) is a die-hard fan who maintains online anonymity and a following that is 7000-strong off the back of his threads that seeks to elucidate the game to Arsenal and football fans in general.
We invited him to shed some light on the entire situation. Please share!
@nonewthing: "Last season, Arsenal quietly had one of the best defenses in the league. Looking at some of the individual defenders involved, I think it is fair to say that was more down to the system rather than the players themselves.