Should Arsenal be giving the teenage Ethan Nwaneri such a bumper contract at his age?

California. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Will Nwaneri’s potential bumber new contract be a mistake by the club.

The recent success we’ve been enjoying in the past few years has been no coincidence, it has been as a result of meticulous planning and a 100% commitment from the club to make things right. This entails making minor changes to how we were previously run and one of these minor tweaks the club has made in recent times has been managing the wage bill sensibly, this was a major problem for us in the late 2010s and early 2020s due the to how we kept a ridiculously high wage bill without the added financial boost of European football. We had players like Ozil and later Aubameyang receiving eye watering wages towards the end of their careers which only contributed negatively to our wage bill, the thing that affected us the most with those deals was how their performances dipped as soon as we handed them bumber new deals.

Arsenal have seemed to learn from that now with the club managing to trim the wage bill considerably over the past few years by cleverly moving fringe players on, and offering more conservative wage packages to new signings, which was why I was very shocked to see rumors circulating recently about the details of a new deal for Ethan Nwaneri.

One particular source in particular Transfersdotcom reported that Nwaneri is set to become the third highest paid teenager in the Premier League with the 17-year-old set to be offered a new five year deal with wages of around £60,000 a week, the report went on to say that the Gunners are doing this to fend off outside interest in the talented teenager.

If this is true it might potentially be a mistake by the club given our past struggles with players underperforming after getting improved termst, also I think the wages might be too much for a player who’s yet to even make his full debut with the club. I understand the importance of tying down talents quickly but most gooners will agree that it might just be too much too quickly for the youngster.

Thoughts gooners?

KENNETH BENJAMIN.


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16 Comments

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  1. Sigh, this is bad but not as bad as putting Nketiah on £100k-a-week. That said, let us not forget even young Pogba was in a similar situation with Man utd and they chose to cheap out rather than tie him down. Eventually they had to buy him back for £90M, stupid money.

    1. Its quite obvious, a mistake. At such a tender age, the board ought to be very pragmatic in financial dealings with our youth players.
      Agreed we recently lost a very promising player to Man United. I still think we should use true values to keep them rather than rushed financial incentives.

  2. 60,000 a week will look cheap as chips 2 years from now when he still has 3 years to go on the contract. I like what we have seen from him, and I trust the decision to give him this contract. Hope we will start to see more of him in the near future.

    1. Well, possibly. Evidently, Arsenal really liked what they saw of Jesus when they decided to sign him on a 5-year contract at around £14m a year. That probably doesn’t look as good a piece of business now though.

      At least with Nwaneri there’s an opportunity to get more evidence before making a decision. I think we should wait and see how he develops for a little longer.

      1. Think Jesús is a poor example, one could argue he has done what he was brought to do , take us where are now, am trying not to use the word phase.
        Further to that he’s an established international plays for probably the greatest football country on earth, don’t forget he’s only 27 still in his prime, you would agree?
        And you know what they say about class.

        But part of the process is about investing in young highly technical youngsters with high ceiling,

  3. Damned either way. However, 60K is manageable, it’s the next upgrade that is crucial but hopefully by then he’ll have shown more of what is to come.

    Some of the mega deals were handed to players at the other end of their careers.

  4. It’s a pretty big contract on relatively (stress, relatively) little evidence so far.

    Yes, he looks to be a very good, young, player but don’t we need to see a little more from him on a regular basis? There’s time to do that – it’s not as though clubs will come along next month and “steal” him away from Arsenal. If he continues as he’s started, then by all means give him a new contract.

  5. I think most Gooners would agree that you don’t see what the club see in training every day, so you’re not really qualified to comment.

  6. Hasn’t Arteta worked it out yet, it’s not so much the amount of money you throw at these young kids now, it’s giving them more minutes in the first team. They need to see a way forward which is something that seems to have escaped Arteta. Has he not noticed that some of our most talented youngsters have left because they cannot see a path going forward. He thinks sitting them on the bench week after week is good enough, it’s not. Last season he had 4 of our best youngsters on the bench for weeks without giving them a minute. In fact in one game where we were leading 6.0 with 20 minutes to play he left them all on the bench and brought on Cedric & Elneny both of whom were leaving at the end of the season. No wonder they leave. Why isn’t Nwaneri getting more time, Odegaard is out for a long period, in the cameos that Nwaneri has been afforded he has shown that he is a natural replacement for Odegaard. He is talented, has a lot of confidence, not knocked off ball easily &best of all is naturally left footed. Only thing he lacks is experience & he won’.t get that until he is starting games

    1. No “some of our best youngsters” have not left because they cannot see a path forward. Ones we don’t want to keep have left, and in the case of the most recent, purely for money.

  7. I expect Nwaneri will be well blooded this season and he will blossom next season to show that it is not purely hype and hope about his potential. I have really been impressed by his cameos thus far, he looks like the real deal. Lock him in.

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