Arsenal have given academy graduates the most opportunities of any club in the top two divisions this season.

Football.london looked at clubs in the Premier League and the Championship to see which teams had given the greatest number of minutes to their academy players so far.

Arsenal came out well on top, as you can see in the top 10:

  1. Arsenal: 4,302 minutes
  2. Middlesbrough: 3,666 minutes
  3. Bristol City: 3,543 minutes
  4. Everton: 3,367 minutes
  5. Leeds: 2,875 minutes
  6. Wolves: 2,683 minutes
  7. Man United: 2,332 minutes
  8. Aston Villa: 2,326 minutes
  9. Ipswich: 2,319 minutes
  10. Tottenham: 2,168 minutes

Hailed all season due to Mauricio Pochettino’s use of youth, Tottenham just about make the top 10.

poch youth

With the Europa League and the League Cup, Arsène Wenger has taken every opportunity to rest his star players and give chances to youngsters like Reiss Nelson, Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Eddie Nketiah.

However, there are also more established players in the first team who started out in the academy, for example Hector Bellerín (1,170 minutes), Alex Iwobi (584 minutes) and Jack Wilshere (521 minutes).

Combine the two, and Arsenal were always likely to come out on top of this list.

If that’s going to continue, however, the youngsters will have to start appearing in other competitions.

There’s only one league cup game over the next two months, and two Europa League matches. After that, it’s knockout rounds, semi-finals and the FA Cup, which is why young players often go on loan in January.

Then again, if Wilshere or Iwobi can get back in the first team, the Gunners could stick around at the top anyway.

We’ll have to wait and see, but for now, it’s nice to see so many of Arsenal’s homegrown players getting a run.