Marcelo Flores has played for Mexico against Chile. Charlie Patino is the best teenager unearthed in decades, according to one seasoned scout. Salah-Eddine Oulad M’Hand is a Holland youth international tearing it up so much that he was named on the bench for a League Cup semi-final.
All of the above are Arsenal players; proof that the club’s global and local scouting networks are in very good order.
And proof, more pertinently, that the club were perfectly capable of fielding a squad of 14 for last weekend’s north London derby, just as they are to face Liverpool in the Carabao Cup semi-final second leg on Thursday.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta could not field a side for the north London derby on Sunday
Precisely how Arsenal managed to convince the Premier League that there were not 13 serviceable outfield players and a goalkeeper in their pool of 50 from first team and academy is something known only to those two parties.
The club point to a Premier League statement allowing them to exclude players yet to debut in the competition from their 14. That would leave them below the required number, they say.
Arsenal’s decision to send midfielder Ainsley Maitland-Niles on loan to Roma and Folarin Balogun to Middlesbrough doesn’t seem to have entered the conversation when they pleaded for postponement. Three days after securing it, they also popped Pablo Mari off to Udinese on loan for good measure.
Equally risible is the Premier League’s citation of Arsenal losing four players to the Africa Cup of Nations as a contributory factor to Sunday’s cancellation. That would be the long-anticipated, biennial international football competition which the club knew perfectly well was happening.
The injury-tracking source Premier Injuries currently lists only two players — Martin Odegaard (now available again) and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang — as carriers of Covid, with a further six carrying physical injuries.
Arsenal sent midfielder Ainsley Maitland-Niles on loan to Roma this month
The Premier League and their clubs are insulting our intelligence and destroying the integrity of the competition with these casual, lightweight agreements to cancel. Arsenal will now play the north London derby with Granit Xhaka, whose two-match suspension should have included that game.
Burnley — another whose claims to lack 14 players seems convenient — will play a vital relegation clash against Watford, postponed for a second time on Tuesday, with a new loan striker, having lost their only
