Per Mertesacker insists that it’s not enough just to collect pools of talent in the Arsenal academy, and he wants to build something to help young players cope with every challenge in life.

Mertesacker is starting to really get going with his job as academy manager at Arsenal now. He oversaw his first game in person recently, and clearly has a lot of ideas about what he wants to achieve with the club.

One of the things he sees as crucial to his role is making sure the young players get the right sort of care to develop as people, not just as players.

“Do we misunderstand what care means? That is the key question for me,” Mertesacker told the Observer on Sunday. “If we throw money at them and give them everything they need, build beautiful facilities, is that really care which helps them for the future?

“That is my question as I step into the academy. Because not everyone will be a professional footballer. This is obvious. The ratios are quite shocking. The more leaders we have that bring more reality into that life in the bubble – when this bubble gets burst not everyone can cope with society – the better.

“I want to find out more, to build something here so that we have youngsters who can cope with any challenge in life. Talent is not enough for me. I want strong young characters who can cope if they get injured, or released, or play at the Emirates in the first team. That is our responsibility.”

Hopefully his efforts should have a duel benefit, if he succeeds. Raising young players to be more balanced as people should help them to deal with any setbacks in their footballing careers too.

If you spend every single day just focusing on playing football and training and taking part in matches, you’re likely to struggle when that routine is taken away from you by a serious injury, or for any other reason.

If the only way Arsenal make players happy is by throwing money at them, how do those same players react if they don’t make it as a professional footballer?

It’s good to hear Arsenal’s former captain aims to focus on those issues, and with any luck the current group of talented stars will benefit greatly from his influence.