The number of players trained by Arsenal and playing in Europe’s big-five leagues has fallen this year, despite the current strength of the club’s academy.

A study by the Football Observatory shows that Arsenal have 17 players trained by the club in Europe’s big-five leagues, a decrease of five on last year. That makes them only the 19th most successful club at training players for the top level.

The UEFA definition of a trained player is one who spends at least three seasons with your club between the ages of 15 and 21. Arsenal’s numbers have also dropped if you look across the 31 European Top Divisions, where they’ve gone from 42 in 2017, to 33 this year.

It’s a rather strange statistic, considering how well the Arsenal academy is doing at the moment. However, the explanation is partly that so many of those youth players have stayed with the u23s this season. We haven’t seen the usual rush of young stars going on loan, with only a select few finding temporary clubs over the summer.

Nonetheless, Arsenal clearly need to work on their methods when it comes to the transition from youth football to professional football. Hopefully, academy manager Per Mertesacker has some good ideas for how to make that happen with the current batch.