Arsenal: Adrien Rabiot has never been more relevant

Arsenal have been linked with Adrien Rabiot for about a century or so, but at this very moment, he has never been more relevant to transfer talk.

Arsenal‘s long-time link to Adrien Rabiot has made all of us a bit numb to any lingering murmurs of a potential move, but that changes now. Rabiot, who is an outcast from the Manchester City academy, has spent some tumultuous years at PSG, but never has it been more tumultuous than now.

According to the club, Rabiot will not play another match until he signs a new contract, which runs out at the end of the year. Apparently the club are determined to sell him off in January to avoid seeing him walk for free in the summer.

Enter Arsenal. Unai Emery used to manage PSG, and thus the links ramped up again when he took over at the Emirates, despite the reports that he was “conceding” a potential Rabiot reunion to Barcelona, who had supposedly agreed to a free deal with the French midfielder at the end of the year.

Emery has spoken at length about Rabiot and his desire to play as a box-to-box midfielder, whereas Emery has insisted on him playing defensively, but as a Gunner, both could win out. Rabiot would be joining a club with a stoic midfield, but if Ramsey is going to leave, box-to-box-er that he is, Rabiot could be a sensible replacement.

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There may be other movement too, if Ozil and Mkhitaryan continue to fluctuate in their own relevance. Rabiot isn’t a direct fit for any of those roles, but he doesn’t have to be. This is Emery’s regime, and he can build it how he wants.

He already knows Rabiot quite well, so the fit would be a comfortable one, and would add so much depth to an already stacked midfield with a world of options for Emery to play with. There are so many specified midfielders, with the likes of Guendouzi, Torreira and even Maitland-Niles playing similarly to Rabiot, but that doesn’t eliminate the potential fit for more Emery-esque players.

Not only that, but Rabiot could have a heroic aura coming with him, as he has already apparently refused to join Spurs, despite being heavily linked with them for some time.

Hard not to like the idea of all of this. Still, if Barcelona are in the mix, chances are he will go there, potentially waste away, and then at the age of 27, wish he’d have come to Arsenal. But hey, I’m no fortune teller.