Reuell Walters: The unused Arsenal wonderkid rebuilding his career at Luton.
The 19-year-old speaks to i’s James Gray about his decision to leave north London, his mum’s fury at a botched move to Man Utd, and how Rob Edwards is shaping the next stage of his career
Reuell Walters smiles as his dad goes over to greet him. Raphael has turned up at the training ground to say hello, and his 19-year-old son is suitably embarrassed.
“Shall I give you a kiss?” he jokes and gets pushed away by the teenager. They both describe Luton Town as “like a family”, a concept clearly so important to them.
“We’ve really resonated with the club’s values,” new signing Walters tells i. “Rob [Edwards, manager] was a massive part of it as well. We really liked Rob’s coaching style. He really likes to help you express yourself. He doesn’t mind mistakes, as long as you react.
”It’s something that you’re looking for as a developing player, you really want to go somewhere where you feel like you can settle in, feel comfortable and thrive.
“He doesn’t feel like a manager at points.”
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Edwards has been the first manager to to give Walters senior game time. After 20 appearances on the bench for Arsenal, he refused a new contract in the summer and left in search of first-team action: he has played all but one league game so far at Luton, and in three different positions.
It makes you wonder how much difference Edwards and Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta see in him. Of course there is a change in level, but is it really so severe? Or does Arteta need to show more faith in the graduates of his much-vaunted academy?
Arsenal gave the second-fewest minutes to teenagers last season (13) and technically only have one product of their own – Bukayo Saka – in the first-team squad. Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith Rowe are two who previously were, but played – at best – bit parts in the first team before being shipped off for pure Profitability and Sustainability Regulations (PSR) profit.
On Wednesday, that trend was bucked: Ethan Nwaneri stood at the side of the Emirates pitch and took a selfie with eight fellow Arsenal youngsters after they had earned 5-1 win over third-tier Bolton. Nwaneri, a direct contemporary of Walters, scored twice. Jack Porter in goal was making his debut just two months after his 16th birthday.
Walters was watching at home a few miles away in Hitchin, where he still lives at home with his parents, but says he doesn’t get jealous when he sees former colleagues getting chances he never did, like Myles Lewis-Skelly, who made his Arsenal debut on Sunday.
Technically, Walters will forever be “a product” of the Arsenal academy, having graduated from Hale End three years ago and come within touching distance of becoming a fully fledged Gunner. But he was actually just as long at Tottenham Hotspur and spent time at almost all the Premier League’s top clubs either as a youth player, a trialist or a squad member, yet never played a competitive game.
There are reasons for that beyond his control. Walters talks, with impressive self-awareness for a 19-year-old, about how hard it was as a shy, introverted character to make friends in the academy, joining as he did just as Covid restrictions were lifting – although he also admits he slightly relished the enforced solitude of these sessions.
When things got more normal, he settled and became one of the best players in the system, showing why Chelsea and Manchester United had been among the clubs trying to lure him away from Spurs.
If you wind back the clock, Walters has always trodden an unusual path. Home-educated, there was no school team to play for. He played for Peckham Town in Dulwich on Sundays, but it was only when a former Crystal Palace coach running Unique FC set up a session specifically for children outside the school system that Walters, then seven, got absorbed into anything like a formal coaching set-up.
“He was so raw technically, but his desire… he wasn’t dirty, but he was fiercely competitive,” says Jamie Waller, whose brainchild the sessions were.
“You would not want to be in a 1v1 situation with him.
“There’s a phrase we use a lot is when you’re looking at players: ‘Is this lad coachable?’. They may be technically wonderful, really comfortable on the ball, but maybe they struggle with information, maybe they’re just aren’t coachable and sometimes coaches get frustrated with those who it’s just not there for them. But Reuell was the opposite of that.”
