Arsenal’s Just Missed List Grows With Paul Pogba

Arsenal have an ever-growing list of people they could have had. Here is one more to add to the collection in the form of French midfielder Paul Pogba.

It’s always fun to play the ‘what if’ game with Arsenal. Arsene Wenger is never shy about telling us what players he has missed out on in the past. Recently he admitted that he wishes he would have signed Petr Cech before Chelsea did.

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That was just another name on the Arsenal “just missed” list. Also on the list is Cristiano Ronaldo, who fell in love with Arsenal. However, Manchester United’s Alex Ferguson realized the potential this kid had and pulled out all the stops to beat Wenger to the punch.

Naturally, Lionel Messi is also on the list. At 15 years of age, both he and Gerard Pique were on the brink of an Arsenal move. The only thing that stopped him was that Arsenal could not find a place for his family to live. So we received just Cesc Fabreagas instead.

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Zlatan Ibrahimovic came to the club as a 17 year old and Wenger offered him nothing more than a trial. Zlatan was ready to accept but Mino Raiola intervened and declared that Zlatan does not do trials, so he walked.

So, basically, the three best strikers in the footballing world were all on Arsenal’s doorstep. But that’s okay. Because there are more.

The latest revelation is Paul Pogba. The Frenchman has been one of the most-talked about players in transfer windows, but he has remained at Juventus, because as he put it, there was once a time where no one but Juventus were interested in him. Now that everyone else is interested in him, he is only interested in Juventus.

Of course, news has recently came out, via Pogba’s brother that he once dreamed of playing for Arsenal among other clubs.

“Paul is a little crazy, obviously in the best sense. His dreams? When he was little, the clubs that made ​​the dream were Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United and Arsenal.”

Hindsight is 20/20, and in terms of what opportunity there was, it was not as close as Zlatan or Messi, but it was still an opportunity.

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However, as we can tell from Arsene Wenger’s latest transactions, he may be enacting a bit of ‘no more superstars lost’ policy. The gross majority of Arsenal’s recent transactions have been wonderkid signings. From Kelechi Nwakali to Donyell Malen, everyone is referred to as “the next” someone. Whether they ever turn into that next something can only be answered in time, but Wenger is not going to be the one that misses out if they do.

It’s impossible to land every single talent out there, obviously. Just because a player wants a certain team and has potential does not mean that he is going to turn out like Paul Pogba.

We could take the whole ‘there’s still time’ approach as well, but teams like Barcelona and Manchester United have been hunting for his signature for several years now and the price looks to be near twice Mesut Ozil’s price. So we can probably forget about it.

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All that being said, wouldn’t it be nice?