Arsenal reportedly reached an agreement over a new four-year deal with Folarin Balogun last week, with the striker set to sign on the dotted line in the coming days. A talented striker in good form at the moment, there’s no doubt this is a big boost for the u23s in the present and the first team in the future.
Balogun’s story so far
Balogun has long been considered an exciting centre-forward talent at Arsenal. He made his u18 debut at 15, before impressing in his first full season the next year with 11 goals and three assists in 18 appearances.
Still just 16 at this point, Balogun started making regular squad appearances with the u23s, notably scoring an injury-time equaliser against Liverpool. But if he hadn’t caught the eye already, the teenager really burst onto the scene in the following campaign – 2018/19.
With Tyreece John-Jules and Eddie Nketiah mopping up most of the u23 minutes, Balogun remained in the u18s and absolutely dominated. He scored 28 goals and assisted another seven in just 24 appearances at that level as Arsenal romped their way to the u18 Premier League South title. He only failed to score in four u18 games all year, and even then he’d usually win a penalty or similar.
In his eight appearances in the older age groups in the same season, the striker scored four times despite only making one start.
Arsenal pushed hard to convince him to sign professional terms with the club, which he eventually did in February 2019. But due to the contract-length restrictions on your first professional deal, it only lasted until 2021.
Now too old for the u18s, Balogun stepped up to the u23s properly, scoring a hat-trick on his first start of the 2019/20 campaign. In all, he scored 13 goals and assisted five in 19 games before the academy season was cut short by the pandemic.
Though Arsenal weren’t particularly impressive in the Premier League 2, they did well in the Premier League International Cup. It was Balogun’s brace against AS Monaco B that sent them through to the semi-finals, and they had a great shot at winning the competition before it was sadly called off.
The contract saga
By this point, other clubs had started to take notice. Brentford made an attempt to sign Balogun for £5m in January 2020, and Arsenal’s efforts to extend his deal went fairly disastrously. Former club contract negotiator Huss Fahmy seemingly made a mess of things, calling talks off completely in early 2020.
As a result, Balogun found himself excluded from any possibility of a first-team call-up, and an exit started to seem more and more likely. Sheffield United made an offer last summer before signing Rhian Brewster, and there was plenty of interest from overseas. Still, Arsenal turned down any bids and Balogun remained in North London.
After the summer transfer deadline passed, it looked like he was heading for an inevitable departure as a free agent in 2021. Then Mikel Arteta stepped in to provide the first small possibility of reconciliation.
Following months of playing and training solely with the u23s and u21s, Balogun started to get call-ups to first-team training, quickly followed by his senior debut from the bench against Dundalk in October.
Most of you will remember what happened next, with the teenager scoring against Molde and Dundalk as he made three further senior appearances in the Europa League group stage and one League Cup appearance against Manchester City.
In the meantime, contract talks finally reopened. When journalists asked Arteta what had changed, he responded simply: “I have decided that I want to keep the player.
“The moment that I started to see more of the player and change certain things that I didn’t agree with, we decided to give it a go, tried to convince the player, try to show him what we want to do with him, why he fits in with what we are trying to do at the club.”
There were still bridges to rebuild, and ultimately it was down to Balogun at this point. If he decided he wanted to leave, Arsenal no longer had the power to stop him. By all accounts, there were plenty of options for him elsewhere.
After months of negotiations, it was a surprise to hear last week’s news that Balogun was finally close to signing. Just months away from the end of his current deal, the 19-year-old is now preparing to sign on until 2025. Arteta reportedly played a key role, but it’s clear that no deal would have been possible without Balogun’s desire to make it at Arsenal.
Assuming we get the announcement we’re all expecting in the coming days, the focus now shifts to whether Balogun is ready to start making the step up to senior football on a more permanent basis.
The 2020/21 season
In what has been a pretty terrible u23 season for Arsenal, Balogun has continued to be a prolific goalscorer. He has 10 goals and three assists in 19 games between the Premier League 2 and the EFL Trophy, as well as scoring a couple of goals in a friendly against Brentford B this month.
The England u20 international received nominations for PL2 Player of the Month in both December and January, and he’s taken on the captain’s armband for Steve Bould’s side since last October.
That’s not to say everything has gone well for the player. He picked up a harsh red card against Everton in November, he had an injury setback in February, and the team have struggled to create chances for him – particularly in the big games.
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is the way the side are setting up. Rather than starting Balogun or summer-signing Nikolaj Moller, Bould usually plays both, forcing one of them out onto the wing. Arsenal don’t play a formation with two strikers, so you just get one of the centre-forwards running the channels.
This isn’t entirely Bould’s fault. Up until the January window, his squad was really lacking for wingers, with most of them out on loan (Coyle), promoted to the first team (Saka, Smith Rowe), injured (Lewis, Oulad M’Hand), or not considered quite ready for u23 football (Flores, Hutchinson, Taylor-Hart).
This has changed in recent months, with Taylor-Hart making the step up, Coyle returning from loan, and Lewis returning from injury. Yet every matchday, Balogun and Moller both start. It’s eerily and unfortunately reminiscent of the way the first-team coaches keep trying to force Alexandre Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang into the same team.
What are Balogun’s strengths and weaknesses?
Without a doubt, Balogun’s biggest strength is in running in behind an opposition defence to score.
That’s always been how he’s scored the vast majority of his goals, as opposed to poaching in the box or acting as a target man. He can poach too, from time to time, but most of his goals come from running at or away from defenders.
That’s largely due to his rapid acceleration combined with good strength and agility on the ball. He’s happy to fight for space chasing down through balls, and at youth level, he usually wins those battles. His finishing is mostly very good too, particularly in terms of the variety of finishes in his locker.
Though he’s largely right-footed, Balogun can also finish with his left when necessary, which makes him even more difficult to defend against. You can’t show him onto either side safely. His heading is also fine, though he only tends to score them when his jump is uncontested.
The concern that comes with all that is that it’s a lot harder to dominate defences physically in the Premier League. Former Arsenal academy manager Andries Jonker talked last summer about the doubts they had about Bukayo Saka at youth level, not because he wasn’t performing well, but because he was so far ahead of the competition in terms of his pace and strength.
It’s harder to evaluate a player’s ability when they can compensate for any technical deficiencies using their physicality. Fortunately, Saka has proven that he can perform just as well in the first team, but we can’t take it for granted that Balogun will step up as easily.
The US-born striker has a great deal of confidence and self-belief, and we’ve seen both the positives and the drawbacks of that in the last couple of years.
Balogun always wants the ball, and repeatedly calls for his teammates to play him in, no matter the situation. He seems to believe he can score from the first minute until the last, and you rarely see him hiding in a match. Undoubtedly, that’s the reason he’s scored so many goals for the academy.
The other side of that is that he can grow visibly frustrated with his teammates when they choose to go for goal instead of passing to him, or when they pass to somebody else, and that’s not always constructive. When things are going badly, you don’t need a teammate screaming at you because you’ve decided to take a shot on. It just adds extra pressure.
That said, Balogun isn’t selfish in front of goal. He’ll take the shot on most of the time, as you’d expect, but he’ll also square it when he sees a teammate in a much better position.
What’s next?
In my opinion, Balogun is ready to start making the step up to the first team next season, but I’d also be perfectly happy with a really good loan spell. There should be plenty of clubs after him, but I certainly wouldn’t bother with a loan to League One or below. I don’t think that would tell us anything we don’t already know about him.
Given the reports of interest from the likes of Sheffield United, Brentford, Everton, Crystal Palace, and others, he should be able to move to a Premier League or Championship club where he can start every weekend.
Ideally, I’d keep him around until January, giving him chances in the League Cup and any other competitions where we can spare the minutes. That way he can get properly integrated with the first team in training and travelling to matches before finding a suitable loan for the second half of the season if it doesn’t look like he’ll get enough games with Arsenal.
2021/22 looks like being a bit of a transitional campaign up front, with Eddie Nketiah and Alexandre Lacazette out of contract after that. Perhaps they’ll leave this summer and open up a spot a bit earlier, but if they don’t then Balogun’s best move would be to spend a year on loan before returning to stake his claim in 2022.
First things first, we await the contract announcement. Then the real work can get started.