Arsenal Transfer Rumors: Who is the next Matteo Guendouzi?

Arsenal will (probably forever) avoid the heavy-handed, Manchester-style transfers, and look for sneaky ones like Matteo Guendouzi. So who’s next?

Arsene Wenger made a habit of using cheap youth signings to “solve” the needs of the Arsenal senior team. While it wans’t always convincing, particularly towards the end of the Wenger era, it worked wonders early on, and Unai Emery is continuing this Wenger-ism where it left off.

Matteo Guendouzi is the best example of that. A long-haired midfielder from the second-tier of French football. Even given the parallel to Laurent Koscielny, there wasn’t a lot of hype about this move until he took the pitch. And then the hype went to 11.

Now the question is who’s next. Who will be the next under-the-radar, Mislintat golden boy to prove that money isn’t everything? And Lucas Torreira doesn’t count. Mislintat has a habit of only picking out the golden boys, so it feels like it’s only a matter of time before he nails it again.

First of all, it’s important we don’t lost track of Konstantinos Mavropanos, who is a Mislintat-man. He made one hell of an impact before going down with an injury at the start of the season that I still don’t completely understand.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

But I’ve called him the next Guendouzi in the past, so that is cheating. There have to be other options out there.

Basically what this comes down to is every “unknown” player that the Gunners are linked to, we have to take seriously. Not like when Wenger was plucking youth products left and right, all of whom have now floundered out of the system. This is Mislintat, the man with the golden eye. And when he is scouting someone, it means they could be special.

There are two names currently being thrown about that most people probably haven’t heard of. Feyenoord “wonderkid” Orkun Kokcu recently made his senior debut, scoring and assisting off the bench, and apparently the Gunners were watching him. He’s just 17 and could be a prime candidate to follow in the footsteps of Guendouzi.

Defensively, Fernando Calero, 23, is attracting attention from Borussia Dortmund, as the centerback has been crushing it at Real Valladolid. Although he is 23, he only just made his senior debut and, with a £10m release clause, he could be another sneaky pick-up.

Whatever the case, whoever we get, if that person is picked by Mislintat, they can potentially become the next Guendouzi. And that is more exciting then dropping hundreds of millions on overpaid (probably Mancunian) divas, if you ask me.