Chelsea have traded places with Arsenal and risk repeating Wenger’s errors

Arsene Wenger always felt history would prove him right. For four seasons running in the late 2000s and early 2010s, he fielded the youngest line-ups in the Premier League, an Arsenal team brimming with the promise of Alex Song, Abou Diaby, Samir Nasri, Theo Walcott, Aaron Ramsey and Jack Wilshere and led, from the age of 21, by a precocious Cesc Fabregas.

“I’m convinced they have the potential to be my best team,” Wenger told reporters in late 2009. “People forget they are an average age of 22. What they do is remarkable. I hope that this squad will still be together in five years and they will dominate Europe and the league in England.”

They were irresistible on their day, when Fabregas, Diaby and Nasri were combining with Robin van Persie or Emmanuel Adebayor, but their youthful elan came with a certain fragility. In stark contrast to the “Invincibles” team that had preceded them, they lacked mature, resilient and battle-hardened characters. Year after year, Wenger said he was building for the future. Year after year, perhaps most memorably against a Didier Drogba-inspired Chelsea, they failed the biggest tests.

That glorious future never came. It is a long, complicated story, but the short version is that trophy success eluded Arsenal over that period and, in the space of four years, Alexander Hleb, Fabregas and Song left for Barcelona, Kolo Toure, Adebayor, Gael Clichy and Nasri left for Manchester City and Van Persie left for Manchester United. A sense of transition took hold and those players who remained struggled, for the most part, to fulfil their potential.

Wenger became more pragmatic over the years that followed. By late 2016, as his Arsenal tenure entered its final 18 months, Wenger’s message was that, while “you can have one or two exceptional talents” — he cited Hector Bellerin and Alex Iwobi, another two who, ultimately, fell short of that level — “the core of the team has to be from 23 to 30”. “You have to have a certain level of experience,” he added earnestly.

In other words, to revive one of the most famous (or infamous) quotes of the Premier League era, “you can’t win anything with kids”.

Former Liverpool captain Alan Hansen was derided for saying that about Manchester United at the start of the 1995-96 season, which would end with Gary Neville, Nicky Butt, David Beckham and Paul Scholes (all 21) and Phil Neville (19) all clutching Premier League and FA Cup winners’ medals.

But broadly speaking, it is true. Those exceptional young talents in Sir Alex Ferguson’s double-winning team were buttressed by the experience of Peter Schmeichel (32), Steve Bruce (35), Gary Pallister (30), Denis Irwin (30) and Eric Cantona (29). Even Roy Keane (24) already had the battle-hardened character of a grizzled veteran.

It has been curious over the past few seasons to see Chelsea, of all clubs, not just adopting the Wenger model of the late 2000s and early 2010s but taking it to such an extreme. Under the ownership of a consortium led by Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital’s Behdad Eghbali, they have spent an extraordinary amount of money on an extraordinary number of emerging talents — some sent on loan for the foreseeable future, others fast-tracked into the first team to sink or swim.

When Arsenal were consistently fielding the youngest teams in the Premier League between 2008-09 and 2011-12, their average age across those seasons ranged from 24 years and one month to 25 years and 280 days. Since the summer of 2023, Chelsea’s line-ups have been not only the youngest in the top flight but among the youngest of the entire Premier League era — week by week, the average age of the starting XI has rarely been more than 25 and frequently been less than 24.

This is seen as a badge of honour at Chelsea, just as it was at Arsenal previously. Among the Stamford Bridge hierarchy, there was great pride drawn from a report which showed Chelsea’s average age was the fourth youngest across Europe’s ‘Big Five’ leagues last season. By far the youngest was French club Strasbourg (average age 21 years and five months), who are part of the same BlueCo ownership group, and from whom Chelsea recently recruited Liam Rosenior to be their new coach.

There is a great deal to be said for targeting younger players. Manchester City’s and Liverpool’s success over the past decade has been based on the acquisition of players moving towards or into their peak years and Arsenal have had a similar approach. Brentford, Bournemouth and particularly Brighton & Hove Albion have reaped the benefits of signing up-and-coming talents who, ideally, will excel in the Premier League and be sold on to a bigger club at a huge profit.

But Chelsea’s approach is extreme. Of the 42 players the club have signed since January 2023, at a total cost of more than £1billion ($1.34bn), more than half (23) were signed between the ages of 18 and 20. A further nine were 21 or 22. Of the remaining 10, who were recruited between the ages of 23 and 26, only Robert Sanchez (signed at 25), Tosin Adarabioyo (signed at 26), Pedro Neto (signed at 24) and Joao Pedro (signed at 23) are part of this season’s squad.

There have been individual successes on the pitch (such as Cole Palmer, Moises Caicedo and the wonderfully gifted Estevao) and players who have been sold on for a tidy profit (such as Djordje Petrovic, Renato Veiga and Noni Madueke).

Collectively, the deficiencies identified by interim coach Frank Lampard towards the end of the 2022-23 season and later by Mauricio Pochettino and Enzo Maresca — a collective lack of experience, resilience and know-how — have still been in evidence in the first six weeks of Rosenior’s tenure.

It is hardly surprising. Young teams are susceptible to mood swings and inconsistencies.

This is a side that has beaten Liverpool, fought against the odds to force draws at Manchester City and (a man down after Caicedo’s red card) at home to Arsenal in the Premier League and beaten Barcelona 3-0 in the Champions League, as well as winning the Conference League and Club World Cup last season, but has also dropped more points from winning positions in the 2025-26 Premier League (19) than anyone except relegation-threatened West Ham United.

So many of those points squandered could be traced to individual lapses: Alejandro Garnacho losing track of Fabio Carvalho in stoppage time at Brentford; Trevoh Chalobah’s red card at home to Brighton & Hove Albion; the passiveness of Tosin and Chalobah when Sunderland’s Chemsdine Talbi struck in stoppage time at home to Sunderland; Caicedo’s poor challenge to concede a penalty to allow Leeds United a way back into the game from 2-0 down, surpassed by the comedy of errors that preceded the equaliser; Wesley Fofana’s red card at home to Burnley last weekend, followed in stoppage time by what Rosenior called a “missed assignment” (Andrey Santos failing to track Zian Flemming at a corner).

But these individual lapses — which extend to the huge number of yellow and red cards they have received this season — cannot simply be written off as a series of isolated blips. Nor can they simply be ascribed to youthful naivety when several have involved Chelsea’s more experienced players (Chalobah, Tosin, Fofana, to which you could add Sanchez’s red card in the opening minutes of a 2-1 defeat at Manchester United in September).

It all points to collective weaknesses of the type that serious teams — ones who can be relied upon to compete in the Premier League week in, week out — do not have.

Rosenior has made an encouraging start, going unbeaten in his first six Premier League matches. But heading into a daunting run of games between now and the March international break — Arsenal away on Sunday, Aston Villa away on Wednesday, Wrexham away in the FA Cup, Paris Saint-Germain away in the Champions League, Newcastle United at home, PSG at home, Everton away — there is an obvious need for improvement.

Pochettino spoke in late 2023 about Chelsea’s players needing to develop “the ability to read the situation of the game” and handle the ebb and flow of Premier League matches without getting frustrated or overexcited.

The more senior players should, in theory, be setting standards and taking their younger team-mates along with them, but appear unable to do either.

We go back to the Arsenal example. Every season ended with the feeling that, if Wenger’s young teams were to take the next step, they needed more experience and stronger personalities through the spine of the team: a top-class goalkeeper rather than Manuel Almunia, Lukasz Fabianski or Wojciech Szczesny; a commanding central defender or two; a midfielder who could help Fabregas and Diaby. And every summer Wenger seemed to shake his head and buy more young creative types instead.

It was an approach summed up by Wenger’s response when he had the opportunity to sign Xabi Alonso from Liverpool in the summer of 2008. Wenger opted against it, feeling that signing an elite-level player in that position might “kill” their young Brazilian midfielder Denilson — a laudable stance from one perspective but one that ultimately put the perceived needs of one player above the needs of the team.

A few months into a difficult 2008-09 season, Fabregas said it was “hard to imagine a midfield where I am the oldest member”, adding that “we find it very hard to win matches as we don’t possess enough experience”.

That is how it feels watching Chelsea these days: so many exciting young players, but a project in which basic principles of team-building appear to have been neglected. Three years into the youth-driven project that effectively began with the January transfer window of 2023, it remains difficult to imagine them competing for the Premier League title, never mind winning it, without investing in players of proven quality, not least in central defence.

The idea — with Arsenal back then, as with Chelsea now — is that young players grow together and mature into a top-class team. But player development is rarely linear, particularly at clubs where there is such a rapid turnover of players and coaches.

Two seasons ago, under Pochettino, the average age of Chelsea’s Premier League starting XI was 24 years and two months. This season it is 24 years and nine months; while Sanchez, Reece James, Marc Cucurella, Fofana, Chalobah, Caicedo, Fernandez, Palmer and others are two years older and, in theory, two years wiser, they find themselves in senior roles among young and inexperienced players who look to them for leadership, direction and a level of reliability that, in some cases, does not come easily.

There is a tendency to talk of this Chelsea team “coming of age” — when they held their nerve during a challenging end to last season or beat PSG in the Club World Cup final. But in a season when others’ shortcomings offered an opportunity in the Premier League, they have won 12 games out of 27 and find themselves 16 points adrift of Arsenal, facing another battle for Champions League qualification.

This was Arsenal’s existence in the late 2000s and early 2010s, building for a brighter future that never came, neglecting weaknesses in their team to add another beguiling young creative talent to their midfield or forward line.

The difference is that Wenger and Arsenal were operating under severe financial constraints following the construction of the Emirates Stadium. Chelsea have followed that path while spending on transfers at an unprecedented level, last season recording the highest pre-tax loss in English football history (£342m), according to data released by UEFA on Thursday.

And these days it is Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal who are at the top of the Premier League, following a blueprint that, tactically and recruitment-wise, appears far closer to the Chelsea of the 2000s — a deep squad built on strong defensive foundations, robust in midfield, with an average age of 26 years and eight months and an expectation of a certain level of mental and physical toughness — than to Wenger’s ideal. In this season’s Premier League, where so many matches have been so attritional, that seems essential.

There was a time when Chelsea, with John Terry, Frank Lampard and Drogba in their prime, used to bully Arsenal. Reporting on those games, the phrase “men against boys” frequently came to mind. These days, the expectation is the opposite. In their past 15 meetings in all competitions since January 2020, Chelsea have won just once.

As they prepare to make the short journey to the Emirates on Sunday, they need to “come of age” once more — and not just to reach a new standard for 90 minutes but to keep hitting that standard over the weeks and months ahead, the way serious, grown-up teams do.