Manchester United spent some £200m on transfers in the summer, but the quiet addition of a 16-year-old free agent to the academy had those in the know jumping for joy.
Chido Obi – his middle name is Martin – turned 17 a week ago and celebrated by signing his first professional contract. The following day he opened the scoring for United U18s in a 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest – it was his 37th in the competition and puts him top of the all-time U18 Premier League scorers list.
It’s an impressive feat at the best of times, but becomes even more so in the context of games and minutes played. That’s 37 goals in a staggering 23 games, putting him ahead of Ellis Simms who managed 36 in 38, and averages a jaw-dropping goal every 45 minutes.
Paul Aladejare, the man who first brought Obi onto an English pitch after his arrival from Denmark, told The Athletic that he immediately saw that the “leggy”, swaggering striker was something else.
Arsenal’s then-head of recruitment from under-12 to under-14 immediately picked up his phone. He told his boss: “You have to get here right now and man-mark this kid’s mum. There are scouts from every club in London asking who he is and where he has come from.”
Since then, until his schoolboy deal expired this summer, Hale End was abuzz with the prodigious talent they had on their hands. During his tenure in London, Obi scored 32 of his record-breaking 37 goals and made himself a legend to United fans before there was any suggestion of him pulling on the shirt when he bagged ten in one game against Liverpool at U16 level.
Aladejare was key to his development: “I did one-on-one technical sessions with him even when he was at Arsenal.
“He was like a sponge. He could take ten shots, bag nine and if he missed one he wanted to start again. He goes again until he gets it right. He used to be a good finisher and now he’s a great finisher. He can still be better in his striking but he’s got quite an unconventional technique. But if it is still ending up in the corner of the net then who cares?”
There is deep frustration at Arsenal that they’ve lost such a promising asset. The Athletic report that the club made Obi “what they felt was a good offer within the boundaries of their wage structure.”
But it doesn’t sound like a simple case of money talking, with the report citing an anonymous source close to the situation as feeling that “Obi believed strongly in the path to the first team at Manchester United given their reputation for promoting youth products.”
Now that United have secured him there’s little chance they’ll be letting him go, and the teenager seems to have taken to life in Manchester like a duck to water – a 14-minute hat-trick on his U18s debut and an assist on his U21s debut is good going by anyone’s standards.
Obi has the starry-eyed amongst United fans dreaming of a repeat of the last centre-forward snatched from Arsenal – one Robin van Persie – but patience will be key. The Athletic explain: “when Obi joined United, before the appointment of Ruben Amorim, the plan was for him to have at least a year of academy football, primarily with the under-18s, and not to rush him.
“United’s academy are conscious not to overhype young players, especially in their early stages of development.”
It’s incredibly dangerous to believe the hype, especially when it’s your own, but according to Aladejare Obi oozes confidence, not arrogance: “He believes he is the best player at his age group in the world. That is his mentality.”
Obi’s senior debut will surely be one of the most hotly-anticipated for a young United player for some time.
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Joe Ponting
Joe has spent more than half his life writing about football and all of it following United. As a child he told a doctor his name was ‘Paul Scholes’, but could never pick a pass like him no matter how much he tried.
