Arsène Wenger claims that his current set of young players are among some of the best he’s had in his 21 years at Arsenal.

With at least a couple of the players in the current Arsenal academy set to play some sort of role in the Gunners’ match against Doncaster Rovers in the League Cup, Wenger talked about how promising the current crop of players are looking, reports the Metro.

“They are comparable to the best I’ve had before – some are really promising. Now we are at a stage to find out if they have the quality and the second step is to develop them by good coaching.

“The third step is to integrate them in first team and that is the most difficult because the level of competition in the Premier League is so high now. This season is a very important one for some of them and this competition (the League Cup) is a very important one for them too.”

Arsenal’s youngsters have been impressive with the u23s so far in the current campaign, sitting second in the Premier League 2 after five matches, only dropping points in a narrow loss to Liverpool, who are top, whilst also beating Manchester City and Manchester United along the way.

A lot of the talk has been about Reiss Nelson, and deservedly so after six goals in just five games, but in my opinion, Joe Willock, Eddie Nketiah, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and others have all shown what they can do at youth level and in pre-season with the Gunners.

Although Arsenal have a lot of depth in the first-team squad at the moment, I believe these young players will still get their chance to prove themselves in the League Cup, and if they do the chances will start to come in the other competitions as well, I feel.

We’ve already seen Maitland-Niles and Nelson in the Europa League, in arguably the Gunners’ toughest group-stage match-up against Köln. If he performs well against Doncaster and in further European encounters with BATE Borisov and Red Star Belgrade, more opportunities for playing time could present themselves.