Arsenal: Houssem Aouar requires familiar transfer puzzle

Arsenal are losing Aaron Ramsey, with Ozil’s future also in question. As such, Houssem Aouar looks like a fantastic solution, barring one familiar puzzle.

It’s no surprise when Arsenal are linked to a central midfielder. It felt like it was all Arsene Wenger ever signed. If we needed a winger, he’d sign a central midfielder. If we needed a striker, he’d sign a central midfielder.

This time around, with the link to Houssem Aouar, it is different. Because as it stands, the Gunners currently have big, fluorescent question marks over the heads of Mesut Ozil and Henrikh Mkhitaryan regarding their prolonged usefulness, and Aaron Ramsey is being forced out the door.

Barring youth options, that leaves a small crop of central midfielder, and an even smaller crop of central midfielders who can chip in goals an assists.

If this club is going to run with the 3-5-2 especially, they need central midfielders that can put up consistent goal tallies.

Enter Houssem Aouar. The 20-year-old Lyon product has shown a knack for putting up handfuls of goals and assists, with this year looking to be the big payoff year, as he already has five goals and four assists in all competitions, amounting to about 1600 minutes.

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That puts him well on pace to hit double digits in at least the goals scored category, with assists likely to catch up, as he is known to create chances as well.

But Aouar is a straight central midfielder because he does the defensive work as well, and that has seen him making appearances all across the board for Lyon. Which obviously makes him a more-than-worthy target of the new Emery-era. He’s young, he plays a position of need, and he looks to have a collection of skills that Emery is quite fond of.

The problem is a familiar one – Jean-Michel Aulas. The Lyon president runs interference on seemingly every transfer involving his club. It took Arsene Wenger three years to prise Alexandre Lacazete away from Lyon, with Aulas always weighing in that his striker was “not for sale” or “committed to Lyon.”

Which is exactly what he has said about Aouar – that he is absolutely not on the table.

I would love for the Gunners to go all in on Aouar, because he is clearly such a valuable player, but they have to know what stands in their way – Aulas.

And there may be no bigger a transfer foe than Aulas and his double-meanings.