TL:DR
- Nacho Monreal expressed surprise at Chuba Akpom, Matteo Guendouzi, and Ignasi Miquel not fulfilling their potential at Arsenal.
- Monreal played a key role during his time, winning three FA Cups (2014, 2015, 2017).
- He now works as a football agent and continues to follow Arsenal’s progress.
- Monreal highlighted the current success of Arsenal’s youth academy but reminisced about missed opportunities with past players.
- He recalled personal regrets over missed titles, notably the 2016 Premier League and 2019 Europa League finals.
Nacho Monreal names three youngsters he’s ‘surprised’ never made it at Arsenal | Football
Nacho Monreal has revealed his ‘surprise’ that Chuba Akpom, Matteo Guendouzi and Ignasi Miquel never delivered on their early promise to become genuine first-team stars at Arsenal.
The Spanish left-back saw countless players come and go across his seven-and-a-half year spell under Arsene Wenger and, briefly, Unai Emery, in north London.
In that time, Monreal proved to be a valuable member of the dressing room and a loyal servant for the Gunners.
Nacho Monreal won three FA Cups during his time with Arsenal
He is perhaps best remembered for being a part of an Arsenal squad, also containing the likes of Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez and Mikel Arteta, that won back-to-back FA Cups in 2014 and 2015.
The defender lifted the trophy again two years later in 2017, before departing the Emirates to return home to Spain and join Real Sociedad, where he called time on his playing career.
Having since transitioned into life as a football agent, Monreal has a wealth of experience to fall back on when finding the most suitable teams for his clients.
But Monreal has made sure to keep an eye on Arsenal’s progress from afar, with his fellow countryman and long-time team-mate Arteta hoping to end the club’s wait for a Premier League title this season.
Myles Lewis-Skelly, Ethan Nwaneri and Max Dowman have all forced their way into the first-team reckoning by breaking out of Arsenal’s academy over the last couple of years – and Monreal continues to be impressed by the conveyor belt of talent rising through the ranks.
But the recent success of Arsenal’s youth system has led Monreal to question just how many promising players may have slipped through the cracks when he was at the club.
‘Obviously, there’s a lot of emphasis on youngsters at Arsenal this season, and it’s a real credit to the academy that so many first-team names have come from that youth set-up,’ Monreal told WTX News.
‘When I think about youngsters who trained with us when I was a player, first of all I think we have to acknowledge that we’re talking about Arsenal’s academy, so a lot of these guys have gone on to have great careers, whether or not that’s at Arsenal.
‘You know, you’ve got the likes of Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith Rowe who are both doing really well at Crystal Palace and Fulham.
‘But when I think about some of the youngsters who could have gone on to have even bigger and better careers, the first name who stands out to me is Chuba Akpom.
‘He played at Ajax for a couple of years and is currently at Ipswich, so of course he’s reached a very good level – but I definitely expected a bit more from him, simply because of some of the things I saw him do in training.
‘When he came up from the reserves, I think we all saw something special in this guy. He was tall, he was fast, and even though he was so young and playing with some huge names, it all just looked so easy to him.’
On Akpom, Monreal added: ‘He scored goals for fun in training and just had something different.
‘I expected a bit more from him and his career, but this is what happens sometimes in life, and in football.
‘Maybe you think someone is destined to have a really good career at the very top, but they don’t quite make that level… for me, Chuba was one of those guys.’
Monreal is also reminded of Guendouzi when casting his mind back to some of the young and talented players he shared a dressing room with at Arsenal.
Guendouzi was tipped for big things after joining Arsenal from Lorient back in 2018, making 48 appearances across an impressive debut season at the Emirates.
But the Frenchman’s attitude and discipline repeatedly came into question as his Arsenal career wore on – and he returned to France to join Marseille in 2022 having fallen some way short of expectations.
‘I think Matteo Guendouzi is another really interesting player who could have maybe done more at Arsenal,’ Monreal explained.
‘He obviously came in for a lot of money and with a lot of expectation because of his age, and the fee the club had paid for him. But if I look back now, I’d probably say he arrived at the wrong moment.
‘He was a really good number six who ran a lot, and was very good with the ball. But he came in at a really difficult moment for the football club, when you look back.
‘You know, he was 18-years-old at the time and playing week-in, week-out for a new Arsenal team who were under a lot of pressure. That’s a lot to deal with for players of that age; you need to be very mature, and ideally you need to have experience to be put in that environment.
‘And in some moments, his attitude was typical of a young boy, which was fine, because that’s what he was. And maybe some fans didn’t quite understand that at the time.
‘But if you were to look back now, you’d probably say Matteo was the right guy, just in the wrong moment, for Arsenal. I think that sums him up perfectly.’
Despite making 14 appearances for the first-team, Ignasi Miquel is perhaps a player many Arsenal fans have since forgotten about – but not Monreal.
Though it never quite happened for Miquel at Arsenal, Monreal insists his compatriot – who now plays for La Liga 2 outfit Leganes – had all the ingredients necessary to go on and become a top centre-half.
‘Another player I often think about is Ignasi Miquel – he was a Spanish centre-back who came through the youth academy and played a handful of times for the first-team,’ Monreal continued.
‘He never really established himself in the first-team squad and that was always a surprise to me, and I thought, “OK, if he’s not going to have a career here, he’ll find another club at a high level”, because he was aggressive, he was strong, he was good with the ball.
‘I think he’s still playing now, with Leganes in the second division in Spain, but, for me, this is another name I’d have thought would have gone on to have a bigger career, because of what I saw of him in training.’
Turning his attentions to his own career, Monreal is immensely ‘proud’ of what he managed to achieve at Arsenal.
However, there are two moments in particular that still haunt Monreal from his time with the Gunners: missing out on the Premier League title in 2016 and losing the Europa League final to Chelsea in 2019.
‘In the later years of my time with the club, I was lucky because I found myself scoring more goals, something which I didn’t do much of in the first half of my time with the club,’ Monreal said.
‘But any time I put my Arsenal shirt on, I tried my best. I wanted to be competitive, regardless of whether we were in good or bad moments, I always wanted to be available for the manager.
‘Even if the last few years weren’t so great, because we didn’t achieve our goals, I’ll always defend Arsenal Football Club and my time there. I’m happy, and proud of what I did achieve with the club.
‘And there were a few standout low moments, of course. Not winning the title in 2016 was obviously a big one for us as a group. We should have won the title that year.
‘I have to admit that Leicester obviously deserve it, but when I look back at how that season went, and how the likes of Liverpool, Man City, Chelsea and Man United were all out of the race, I still feel like it should have been our title to lose.
‘When it became a two-horse race, from December onwards, everyone expected Leicester to drop points and fall away, but they didn’t. Even when we beat them at the Emirates, when Danny Welbeck scored the winner, while we should have kicked on from that point – which could have been the huge turning point in the season – the truth is that Leicester responded by winning their next game, and we responded by losing ours. It was our moment and we didn’t take it.
‘The other difficult moment which stands out to me is the Europa League final, in 2019, against Chelsea. That was the first season without Arsene [Wenger] and the first under Unai [Emery]. And, to be honest, I thought we had had a really, really good season up until the last few games.
‘We had a great run in the first-half of the season and we reached the Europa League final. But we ended up winning only two of our last seven games in the league, losing three in a row and missing out on the Champions League places, and then we lost the final to Chelsea. The feeling among the whole team after that game was bad, and it could have been so different.’
The former Spain international went on: ‘On a personal level, a particularly low point came not long into my career at Arsenal; I was brought straight into the team when I signed, because Kieran Gibbs was injured… I think I played seven or eight games in a row, and thought I played really well, but when Gibbo came back from injury, he was straight back into the starting line-up.
‘That was one of the first times in my career I had to get used to not being in the starting line-up, and I have to say that was a really challenging moment for me to deal with personally.
‘I always say it’s a really difficult league to play in, and I’ve seen many Spanish players over the years come to England and not be successful, because it’s really tough.
‘It’s a much more physical league than in Spain, and you have to be ready for a battle every week… It’s not easy, and I’m proud I was able to compete in it for so long.’