Arsenal or Chelsea: Who has the better crop of young talent?

Arsenal and Chelsea both have a strong crop of under-22 talent coming through at the moment, but which crop is the superior one?

Arsenal’s win over Bournemouth in the FA Cup 4th round on Monday was largely inspired by the youngsters in their team, despite coming up against a rather experience Eddie Howe side.

Gabriel Martinelli (18) assisted Bukayo Saka (18) for the opening Gunners goal, and the latter later assisted Eddie Nketiah (20) for Arsenal’s 2nd goal, while Joe Willock (20) played a crucial part in both goals and Matteo Guendouzi (20) was the best player on the pitch throughout the 90 minutes.

Over the course of the season, both Arsenal and Chelsea have had multiple youngsters rise to prominence in the first team, and both clubs have pulled away from the rest of the pack in the conversation of ‘who has the best young talent?’.

Before analyzing this, I am classifying ‘young talent’ as players aged 22 and under, and not necessarily out of the academy, although that certainly adds a bit more value to it.

Liverpool and Man City don’t have much youth presence in their team, while Spurs and Manchester United have decently impressive youth with the former playing Ryan Sessegnon and Japhet Tanganga regularly and the latter relying quite a bit on Mason Greenwood and Brandon Williams in the first XI.

https://twitter.com/brfootball/status/1221781338690334720

Arsenal and Chelsea on the other hand, have multiple top youngsters in many positions. Along with the 5 Gunners youngsters I mentioned in the 2nd paragraph, players like Reiss Nelson, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, and Emile Smith Rowe have also shown glimpses of massive quality, while the behemoth 18-year-old center-back William Saliba will join in the summer.

The Gunners’ young talent is vastly skilled on a technical level, and players like Martinelli and Guendouzi have made such massive strides in such short periods of time, making them a very impressive group. Bukayo Saka has undergone a rather seamless transition from left-wing to left-back and hasn’t missed a beat, playing well and starting regularly with Kolasinac and Tierney out injured.

For Chelsea, Mason Mount, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Reece James, Fikayo Tomori, Tammy Abraham, and Christian Pulisic are shining at a high level and playing important minutes for the Blues.

However, one thing sets the Blues apart from the Gunners in terms of young talent, and not exactly in a good way:

All of Chelsea’s young players, apart from Hudson-Odoi, have already had experience at high European level with other clubs. Last season, Mount and Tomori were playing regularly for Derby in the highly-competitive Championship, while Abraham was with Aston Villa and James was with Wigan, both in the same division. Pulisic was a regular for years at Dortmund as well.

When you compare that to Arsenal, only Guendouzi and Nelson had high-level experience prior to this season, and even then, it was rather minimal. Martinelli came from the state league in Brazil, while Saka, Willock, and Nketiah are straight out of the academy. Therefore, it’s more surprising to see Arsenal’s crop shining this season than it is to see Chelsea’s, which puts points in Arsenal’s favour.

https://twitter.com/ftbIswanny/status/1221144998923599873

However, something sets Arsenal apart from Chelsea in a negative way too. The 2 players that are arguably Arsenal’s best u22 talents, Guendouzi and Martinelli, were not actually developed by the club. Therefore, you have to split up this conversation into 2 separate categories:

Who has the best academy talent? Well, that absolutely has to go to Chelsea. Out of their crop, only Pulisic was brought in from elsewhere, while Hudson-Odoi, James, Mount, Tomori, and Abraham have all been at Chelsea since childhood and have developed into starters.

But who has the best talent overall? I reckon Arsenal just barely edges it. Matteo Guendouzi is a sensational midfield talent at the level that Chelsea does not possess in its youth crop. Martinelli has also been the most impressive youth player across both teams this season when you factor in what expectations were like heading into the season.

All of Arsenal’s crop has exceeded expectations this season, apart from maybe Reiss Nelson, but for Chelsea, Hudson-Odoi and Pulisic have both failed to live up to the hype thus far. That makes a difference too.

It’s obvious that both of these sides possess a high level of u22 talent – significantly higher than any other top club in England. However, when it comes down to the question of which crop of youngsters is better, it really comes down to whether you want to judge them by their academies, or simply by the level of the players.