With five clubs assembling Champions League squads and a Premier League spending spree set to smash all records it’s going to be harder than ever for academy prospects to take the final giant step-up into the first team this season.

Already this summer we have seen numerous budding talents loaned out, kids unquestionably good enough and ready enough to have made a meaningful contribution to their parent club while making a name for themselves in the process. Instead the Eredivisie awaits, or League One, or Segunda Division; nascent stars-in-the-making scattered to the four corners of the globe to gain valuable experience because their pathways are blocked in the English top flight.

The five teenagers below are presently being retained by their clubs (though with six weeks left until September 1st don’t discount a possible loan move for at least two of them) and stand a better chance than most to buck the depressing trend of the Premier League relying solely on the established and the expensive.

Whether it’s further continuing their progress through the youth ranks with the odd League Cup appearance thrown in or to find themselves promoted from the peripheries of the first team squad this could well be their year.

 Phil Foden (Manchester City)

Ahead of last night’s all-Manchester derby in Houston, Texas (there is something very wrong with that sentence) it can well be imagined that the 17 year old from Stockport was told the usual clichés from the backroom staff to stem his debut nerves. “Just play your normal game, son”. “Keep it nice and simple”.

Two hours later Pep Guardiola said this: “I don’t have words. I would like to have the right words to describe what I saw. You are the lucky guys who saw the first game, for the first team of Manchester City, for this guy.

It’s a long time since I saw something like this. His performance was another level. He’s 17-years-old, he’s a City player, he grew up in the academy, he loves the club, he’s a City fan and for us he’s a gift.”

With a 98% pass accuracy and 14 key passes – and all while running rings around Paul Pogba – it was simply a mesmerising introduction and puts Foden firmly in the reckoning to become the much-lauded City academies’ first home-grown star.

Marcus Edwards (Tottenham Hotspur)

A contract dispute never fails to fully reveal a club’s estimation of a young player and when some of Europe’s big hitters sniffed the vague possibility of snagging the 17-year-old ‘mini-Messi’ last summer Spurs were swift and decisive in tying down their attacking prodigy on professional terms.

Football Soccer - Juventus v Tottenham Hotspur - International Champions Cup - Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia - 16/17 - 26/7/16 
Tottenham's Marcus Edwards in action against Alex Sandro of Juventus  
Action Images via Reuters / David Gray

Now a year on and free from a niggling ankle injury – not to mention the proud recipient of a Euro Under-19s winner’s medal – Edwards can expect to be deployed down Tottenham’s left flank in the more winnable league games fixture around their Champions League travails next term.

Blessed with a magical left peg and low centre of gravity that allows him to conjure in even the tightest of spaces there is a strong chance his name will be regularly sung around Wembley stadium by springtime.

Timothy Fosu-Mensah (Manchester United)

With twelve first-team appearances already under his belt the Dutch teenager’s development is at a far more advanced stage than the other names included here but 2017/18 is still expected to represent a significant breakthrough season for the versatile defender.

Jose Mourinho’s candid admission earlier this week that there will probably be just one more new arrival to Old Trafford surely means that Fosu-Mensah – along with fellow 19 year old Axel Tuanzebe – will be employed with greater regularity and to that end the composed, powerful talent has been putting himself through a rigorous training regime over the summer to return in peak fitness from a shoulder lay-off.

That will not have gone unnoticed or unappreciated from those it most helps to impress.

Rhian Brewster (Liverpool)

Late last year gossip began to spread. Liverpool had a kid in their ranks with a future so bright the club suppressed all talk of him. That player is Rhian Brewster.

The 17-year-old striker’s scoring exploits with England’s Under 17s earlier this summer let the secret out and though a foot injury has prevented any involvement in the Reds’ friendlies his rise to prominence is all-but-inevitable as Liverpool fight on four fronts.

Fleet-footed, clinical and a headline-maker’s dream once he signs his first lucrative contract Brewster will be drip-fed first team experience in 2017/18 if only to curtail the enormous expectation on his young shoulders.

Reiss Nelson (Arsenal)

The highly rated attacking midfielder has already staked a valid claim for first team action in the months to come with an eye-catching performance in Sydney as the Gunners began their pre-season touring.

Nelson may be a raw 17-year-old at this stage but Arsene Wenger rarely shies from taking a leap of faith in his most promising kids and has even admitted Nelson is ‘very close’ to making the grade.

Being given Nacho Monreal’s shirt number down in Oz only heightens the hype.