Arsenal’s rather unexciting first-team recruitment activity has dominated the summer chat in the pubs of north London. Their Hale End academy, however, has quietly endured its own transfer misery.
Despite being Premier League champions and boasting one of England’s most celebrated youth set-ups, Arsenal have lost a string of key recruitment battles – from being beaten to top targets to seeing their own highly-rated prospects reject new deals.
First, Manchester City hijacked a move for promising Leicester City winger Jeremy Monga, whom Arsenal had been close to signing. Second, Tottenham are poised to beat the Gunners to West Ham’s Under-15 midfield star Isaac Allen.
And then internally, talented youngsters such as Kyran Thompson and Mishel Nduka have chosen to continue their careers elsewhere.
Behind the setbacks lies a changing academy market in which rival clubs are prepared to offer eye-watering salaries to 16-year-olds, while Arsenal remain reluctant to match those figures. Combined with an increasingly difficult pathway into Mikel Arteta’s title-winning first team, it has created a perfect storm that is testing the club’s renowned youth system.
Missing out on Monga first drew attention to this academy malaise. The 17-year-old Leicester star was on track to join the Gunners after the club registered their firm interest for weeks and put in the groundwork. Yet, City stole in amid Arsenal’s reluctance to meet Leicester’s £10million valuation. City paid £12.5m for the youngster.
Arsenal’s academy players are put through their paces – but it has been a frustrating summer at Hale End
Arsenal missed out to Manchester City for the services of Jeremy Monga, with City agreeing to pay Leicester a higher fee
That hasn’t been the only attempted transfer not to come to fruition.
As Daily Mail Sport reported last week, Tottenham are close to beating Arsenal to signing West Ham’s 15-year-old Allen. Again, the Gunners were keen on the player – but Spurs are now confident they will land him.
There are, meanwhile, a number of prospects Arsenal wanted to keep and have sign scholarship terms – with a view to a professional contract aged 17 – who have turned down deals. They include Thompson, the highly-rated 16-year-old winger who joined in 2024 after the club paid West Ham £1.1m.
Last season, Thompson was fast-tracked into the Under 18s, while also featuring for the Under 19s in UEFA’s Youth League – an academy version of the Champions League – and making his Under-21 debut in Premier League 2.
The Gunners saw a pathway for the teenager and were keen to tie him down to a new extended contract. Yet, as Daily Mail Sport reported, he turned it down and pursued a move to Spurs – before pivoting to join Newcastle.
Nduka falls into the same category. He joined the Arsenal academy in September 2025 after eight years at Charlton. The skilful midfielder, who turned 16 in April, made the Under 21s squad twice last season and also featured in a UEFA Youth League Under-19 match against Club Bruges in December.
He regularly appeared for the Under 18s, playing 10 games in a group above his own age, and shone. But he has now joined City.
Some young players cannot see a way into Arsenal’s first team now that they are successful on the pitch
Myles Lewis-Skelly (left) and Bukayo Saka have helped build Hale End’s reputation as a production line of elite talent
There are two factors influencing Arsenal’s predicament. The first is money. The likes of City are willing to pay way beyond the Gunners in wages for academy players. And that outlay does not count towards the Premier League’s financial rules so clubs can, to a degree, throw what they want at these youngsters.
Daily Mail Sport understands Nduka’s City deal includes a salary of £20,000 a week, which puts the 16-year-old on around £1m a year. Monga, meanwhile, is understood to be on a much more lucrative wage.
Arsenal’s stance is that they are unwilling to pay salaries they believe are disproportionate for players yet to play senior top-flight football. Their focus is on development, building a genuine career pathway and potential re-sale value. But in reality, the academy landscape has changed.
The other element is a pathway to the first team. Some young players can’t see a way to the senior squad because of how well Arsenal have done on the pitch.
As reigning champions with a squad so strong the likes of Christian Norgaard played only a handful of games last season, earning a place in the set-up is extremely hard. This makes other clubs, like Tottenham for example, an attractive proposition.
Some players believe the pathway to first-team football is clearer at a club that narrowly avoided relegation in the last two seasons.
There have been some wins, though, in this window under new academy director Pascal De Maesschalck who was appointed earlier in the month. His arrival has helped steady the ship after uncertainty following Per Mertesacker’s departure, the club actively operating in the market.
Arsenal are close to completing the signing of Cardiff City teenager Axel Donczew.
The 16-year-old attacking midfielder made headlines last October when he became Cardiff’s youngest-ever senior player, aged just 15 years and 234 days old when he came on as a substitute in the Welsh club’s EFL Trophy game against Newport County.
Elijah Upson, the 18-year-old son of Matthew, last week signed for Arsenal from Spurs and has joined up with the Under 21s.
The Gunners are also pushing hard to acquire Crystal Palace striker Mylo Bernard, 16.
But the whole academy market is in a state of flux, turbo-charged by eye-watering sums and a desire by top clubs to seize the country’s best talents before they turn professional at 17.
Kyran Thompson, the highly-rated 16-year-old winger who joined the Gunners in 2024 from West Ham, turned down a new Arsenal contract to join Newcastle
Mishel Nduka joined the Arsenal academy in September 2025 after eight years at Charlton but has now moved to Manchester City, where his salary is £20,000 a week
For Arsenal, the challenge is complicated. Hale End has built a reputation for producing elite talent, with Bukayo Saka, Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly among the graduates to break into the first team in recent years.
The Gunners can point to their record of promoting youth, but the battle for the best young players is no longer simply about reputation or coaching. It is about money and opportunity.
For years, Hale End was viewed as one of Arsenal’s greatest competitive advantages.
Now, as the club sits at the summit of English football, protecting that advantage is proving to be its next great challenge.
