Arsene Wenger has caused a bit of a stir amongst United fans this week by claiming that the club no longer has the patience to develop youth, unlike Arsenal.

We want to continue to combine stronger financial resources with faith in our philosophy and policy. That means we want to continue to give chances to young players and build the players from inside our club with our culture. Afterwards, if we can buy the exceptional players, we can compete today. But that will not be the basis of our policy.

You can take Barcelona or Man United, who had a generation and built their success on players who came from within. These are our values and it is our DNA and it’s important we keep that. With United’s success they have created huge financial resources and today there is no patience for them to continue to do what they did — and they have the financial resources to go with a different policy.

These are interesting remarks from Wenger, particularly when you consider his club spent £100m on buying Alexis Sanchez, Mathieu Debuchy, Callum Chambers, Danny Welbeck, Gabriel Paulista, David Ospina and Krystian Bielik last season. The summer before that, they spent £42.5m on Mesut Ozil alone.

Still, when he talks about a change of policy, with United spending close to £145m last season, what impact did that have on our youth development?

Young players who have been developed in United’s academy made a total of 70 appearances in the league last season. Arsenal, who according to Wenger, are sticking to their values and DNA unlike United, gave their former academy players 77 appearances in the league. United gave Premier League debuts to five former academy players, while Arsenal gave debuts to two of their players.

Louis van Gaal has won the league title with every club he has managed, giving debuts to the likes of Iniesta, Xavi, Seedorf, Kluivert, Puyol, Alaba, Valdes, Motta, Kroos and Muller, to name a few.

“Every young player coming up is a guardian because he learns the culture of the club from the age of a child,” Van Gaal said in the season just gone. “The Class of ’92 were guardians of the culture. It is very important that a club like Manchester United has these guardians and therefore you need a very good education. That is very important to me. I did it with Barcelona and at Bayern. I want to do that here and the youth players have to take their chance.”

Van Gaal now manages a club that have included a youth team player in every single match day squad since 1937. It’s hard to fathom what Wenger is trying to get at here, but if he thinks that United have abandoned their desire to develop their own players, a philosophy that has been integral to the club since Sir Matt Busby, he’s barking up the wrong tree.

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