Arsenal: The feeling is definitely mutual, Matteo Guendouzi

Arsenal youngster Matteo Guendouzi has spoken up about just how happy he is at the club, and it’s safe to say that the feeling is 100% mutual.

If you look at it on paper, Matteo Guendouzi‘s inaugural Arsenal season, plotted out, could easily be misconstrued. He started the season in the starting XI, the was gradually weeded out and has seen his substitution minutes dependent on how a match is going.

While he has retained a starting spot in the midweek fixtures, he still hasn’t exactly “stayed on top,” yet this is just another reason why numbers don’t tell the whole story. Because Guendouzi has been such a fantastic asset to the club that it doesn’t do him justice to boil it down to his “downward” trajectory.

Guendouzi spoke up during this (lengthy) international break, saying that he was very happy with his place at Arsenal, and with the initial impact that he has made and, for what it’s worth, it has to be said that then feeling couldn’t be more mutual.

I don’t think many fans were expecting a no-name from Lorient to make the head-waves that he initially made upon arrival, but for awhile there, we were wondering if he wasn’t actually the better signing than Lucas Torreira.

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At a time when fans were starved for a fearless midfielder who could win the ball back and use his athleticism to cover a ton of ground, it goes without saying that we all expected Lucas Torreira to be the answer (which he inevitably ended up being).

But for awhile there, he wasn’t. For a while there, Guendouzi was the answer, because he was doing all the things we were expecting Torreira to do, and he was doing them so convincingly that it looked as though we had found a sneaky solution. He led the league in ball-winning plays through two matches – two matches against Chelsea and Manchester City that were otherwise disappointing.

Guendouzi may have fallen off a bit since then, but the quality of his play has found a comfortable consistently that sees him at the center of proceedings every time he takes to the pitch in one of these midweek competitions.

I have spent so much time this international break praising the young Frenchman, but it’s hard not to. There is just so much going for him that sometimes I feel like it’s okay to go a bit nuts in heaping the praise on.