Decisions need to be made on Kacurri and Kabia with new U21s season dawning

The new Premier League 2 season gets underway on Friday with Arsenal U21s taking on their Fulham counterparts.

Fulham thrashed Sutton United’s first-team 7-0 in the National League Cup last night and have talented players at their disposal such as Seth Ridgeon and Aaron Loupalo-Bi, which suggests that this will be a tough encounter.

Arsenal concluded their pre-season preparations with a 2-0 win against Monaco II which indicates that the Gunners have much quality when able to call upon something approaching their strongest squad, which certainly wasn’t the case earlier in pre-season.

However, as the new campaign approaches there are some players in the U21 setup who should really have moved beyond this level by now.

Winger Ismeal Kabia, for instance, scored a fine goal against Monaco II and made his debut for the first-team against Bolton Wanderers in the Carabao Cup last season.

However, the 19-year-old didn’t manage to get off the bench during the recent Asia Tour and it surely wouldn’t be beneficial for him to spend another season playing U21s football

Kabia certainly seems ready to test himself on loan but would probably have to sign a new contract for that scenario to occur.

Defender Maldini Kacurri is in a similar situation.

Last season the centre-back also made his debut against Bolton before spending the second half of the campaign on loan at Bromley, for whom he made three appearances.

Kacurri wasn’t selected for the Asia Tour and appears to have been overtaken in the pecking order by 15-year-old Marli Salmon.

The Albania youth international is back from a minor injury and is in need of another loan spell.

Right-back Josh Nichols, as documented previously, is also ready for a loan spell.

It is hoped that the same scenario won’t occur when the likes of Jimi Gower, Salah-Eddine and others didn’t go on loan as they were in the final year of their contracts and ended up leaving as free agents at the end of the campaign.