“However, the New York-born man has struggled for game time over recent times and won\u2019t want to see his development stifle.”<\/em><\/p>\nBalogun has scored 14 goals already this season in Premier League 2,including a hat-trick this week in a 5-3 defeat against Barnsley which added weight to the view of England Under-21 boss Lee Carsley who believes that he has grown out of that level of football.<\/p>\n
“He’s probably missed out on that little bit of senior football. You need testing. Watching him in the U23’s for Arsenal, it’s probably a little bit too easy for him and he’s passed that level,” Carsley claimed.<\/p>\n
“I imagine he wants to play for Arsenal and pushing for a position but it’s such a big club with a lot of competition.<\/p>\n
“I think it would be fair to say that a lot of the clubs in Europe would be aware of Flo’s qualities and if anything he has just got to keep proving it to himself.”<\/p>\n
Balogun himself has admitted that he is ready for a new challenge and said “I have played youth football for a little while, I have obviously scored a lot of goals at that level and improved at that level drastically from when I started.<\/p>\n
“I do feel like I am ready for a new challenge but I am not sure what that might be, it might be a loan or if I am needed at Arsenal then I am here and the gaffer knows that.<\/p>\n
“I am definitely open to a new challenge but it is something that whatever that challenge is I will be ready.”<\/p>\n
It is therefore believed that Arsenal will be prepared to let him leave on loan as they would prefer not to make a sale at this point but definitely see him gaining experience in a first team somewhere.<\/p>\n
Given the current ‘issues’ that seem to surround both Michael Obafemi and Morgan Whittaker’s places in the first team squad a new striker seems a must in the January window and securing a player such at Balogun would be a massive coup for the Swans but with competition fierce it seems unlikely although not impossible.<\/p>\n
Watch this space?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This morning’s transfer link sees us, Middlesbrough and Bournemouth all linked with a January move for Arsenal striker Folarin Balogun. The link starts in the Sun (yes, we know!) who also claim that Middlesbrough – the Swans next opponents in the league – are at the front of the race to sign him on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203,295],"tags":[680,664,608],"class_list":["post-50287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","category-transfer-rumours","tag-arsenal","tag-folarin-balogun","tag-the-2021-22-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}