Arsenal Targets Leicester's Jeremy Monga for Future Development

Arsenal’s academy revolution shows no sign of slowing – and the next name on the list is Jeremy Monga.

The club are working to secure a deal for the Leicester City winger, football.london understands, with the 16-year-old emerging as a serious target after breaking into senior football and shining in difficult circumstances.

A street footballer in a man’s game

Monga’s rise has been fast and raw. He made his Premier League debut in 2024/25 and then became a regular in the following campaign as Leicester slid out of the Championship and into League One. The team crumbled. His reputation didn’t.

Leicester City correspondent Josh Holland, of LeicestershireLive and the Leicester Mercury, has watched that development at close quarters – and his description of the teenager is exactly the kind that makes recruitment departments lean forward.

“Monga plays football at a professional standard, like he is playing in the street,” Holland said. A “remarkable ball-carrier” who is “obsessed with beating his man and driving forward”.

This is not a safe, sideways winger. He wants the ball, wants the duel, wants to run at people.

His natural home is off the left, taking up high and wide positions by the touchline, then driving infield with the ball. Strong on both feet, blessed with sharp agility, he fits the modern profile of a wide forward who can receive under pressure and explode past defenders.

Leicester, Holland argues, barely scratched the surface.

“Leicester didn’t use him anywhere near as much as they should have last season in the Championship,” he said, drawing a line between Monga and Arsenal’s own Max Dowman. Different players, but similar electricity.

The gap on Arsenal’s left

Arsenal’s youth core is already one of the most exciting in Europe. Max Dowman, Marli Salmon, Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly have all stepped over the threshold from promise to genuine first‑team involvement.

Yet there is a clear imbalance. With uncertainty around the futures of Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard, the club’s pathway on the left flank looks thinner than on the right or through the middle. That is where Monga comes in.

He is not being signed to walk straight into Mikel Arteta’s starting XI. Not yet. Arsenal are actively searching for a wide left player who can replace any departing senior star, with Morgan Rogers of Aston Villa the main target for that immediate role.

Monga would be something different: a project with a high ceiling, a player to grow into the side rather than be dropped into it.

Even Holland, who has seen the hype swirl around the youngster, doesn’t expect an instant impact in north London.

“I don’t expect him to feature for Arsenal anytime soon,” he admitted. “Give him one more season, and I think he’d be ready to be a key member of Mikel Arteta’s side.”

That timeline fits Arsenal’s recent behaviour. The club have not been shy about trusting youth when the moment is right. Dowman’s use this season is a case in point, proof that Arteta will hand minutes to teenagers if they justify it in training and in brief cameos.

Generational flashes, teenage flaws

The first signs that Monga might be different arrived late in the 2024/25 Premier League season. Thrown into the first team, he went at defenders as if he had been doing it for years.

“When he came into the first team at the end of the 2024/25 Premier League season, he was turning defenders inside out, and it genuinely felt like City had a generational talent,” Holland recalled.

Then came the drop.

His expected minutes fell, questions surfaced over his attitude, and the story started to look familiar: a gifted teenager, a struggling club, and the inevitable tension between short‑term survival and long‑term development.

Holland is not convinced this is a problem of character.

“His drop in expected minutes was a concern, and there were some doubts over his attitude,” he said. “But I’m in the camp that he’s just a 16-year-old taking the pressure in his stride, and he’s not an emotional figure.”

In other words: a kid, not a lost cause. A player still learning how to carry expectation, not someone defined by it.

The price of potential

The numbers involved underline how highly Monga is rated. Suggestions are that Arsenal would need to pay between £10 million and £15 million for a player who has only just turned 16 and has made 37 senior appearances.

A tribunal could yet be required to set the final figure, depending on how the move is structured. But Leicester’s situation changes everything.

Relegated to League One, the club are now operating from a position of weakness. A fee in that range, for a teenager, is hard to turn down.

“I’m split on this. £10m-£15m is a decent fee for a 16-year-old,” Holland admitted. “Even more so when you consider he’s only played 37 times at senior level.

“But on the flip side. 12 months ago, the thought of him leaving for that seemed unrealistic. That’s the result of Leicester’s relegation to League One.

“As a third-tier outfit, City can’t turn their nose up at that sort of fee.”

For Leicester, it is a painful compromise: cash in now, or risk losing a major asset for less later. For Arsenal, it is an opportunity they would not have had if Leicester had stabilised in the Championship or bounced back to the Premier League.

A calculated gamble Arsenal know well

Arsenal’s recruitment under Arteta and Edu has repeatedly targeted this space: players just before or just after the breakthrough, bought at a premium for potential rather than proven output. It is a strategy that demands conviction.

Monga would be another bet on upside. A left‑sided winger with street‑football instincts, elite ball-carrying and the arrogance to take the game on. A teenager who has already felt the weight of a relegation battle and still gone at defenders.

He is not ready to solve Arsenal’s immediate problems on the flank. He might not even be seen much at the Emirates in his first year if the move happens. But if Holland’s view proves right, and one more season is all he needs, the question shifts quickly.

In a year’s time, will we be talking about a risky fee for a 16-year-old from a relegated club – or about the moment Arsenal quietly stole a future cornerstone of their attack from a team that could no longer afford to dream?