It is being widely reported that Arsenal have managed to convince Portuguese youngster Domingos Quina to ditch Chelsea and sign for the Gunners instead.

A talented midfielder, Quina has seven goals in eight Portugal u17 appearances and will be able to sign a professional contract when he turns 17 in November. It seems the midfielder will be signing that contract in north London.

The majority of the media, including reporters from the BBC, Sky, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail have all claimed Arsenal are close to securing a deal, beating competition from Spurs and Manchester United.

Quina left Benfica for Chelsea at the age of 13 and has developed well but it seems the next step of his career will be away from Stamford Bridge. There’s a worrying trend developing on the King’s Road, where plenty of highly talented young players are developing but very few have had first-team opportunities.

Over the past year and a half, Arsenal have taken huge steps to improve the level of overseas talent coming through the ranks at the Emirates Stadium. Krystian Bielik, Vlad Dragomir, Ismael Bennacer, Donyell Malen, Yassin Fortune and, of course, Jeff Reine-Adelaide have all been signed at the age of either 16 or 17 since last January, plus another Portuguese wonderkid in goalkeeper Joao Virginia.

It’s very exciting times at the Arsenal academy and we should start to see some of these players, plus English talents like Chris Willock and Reiss Nelson, break into the first-team squad before too long.