Arsenal: The one concern of Henrikh Mkhitaryan sale

This week, Arsenal midfielder Henrikh Mkhitaryan was loaned out to AS Roma. The move has been widely praised, but there is one remaining concern: Why did he play against Spurs?

It was time for Henrikh Mkhitaryan to leave. While he was a unique and nifty solution to Alexis Sanchez odour, 18 months later, it is clear that he was never really going to freshen up the stench. In fact, he only added to it, just he cost less.

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Arsenal were somewhat forced into signing the Armenian. Sanchez was going to leave for nothing six months later, no one was willing to pay any sort of fee as a result, and the Gunners simply had to take what they could. Mkhitaryan, then, it was.

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Despite a hat-trick of assists in his first outing, it quickly became clear that he lacked the quality, speed and commitment to succeed at the sharp end of the Premier League. He may have totalled 26 goals and assists in one Bundesliga campaign for Borussia Dortmund before he arrived in England, but that iteration very quickly disappeared.

And so, this week, Arsenal offloaded the now 30-year-old, loaning him out to AS Roma for a season, simply to get his hefty £180,000-per-week wages off the already stretched books. Afterwards, Mkhitaryan was asked about his Italian move:

"“Everything happened in the last day right after the Tottenham game I got a call from my agent. He told me that I have to fly to Rome the next day to have a medical with the team and also sign a contract. It is a great opportunity for me as I didn’t get a lot of playing time.”"

It seems, then, that was a rather sudden decision. It may have been planned earlier on in the summer, but Roma did not appear as a potential destination until very late in the day. And Unai Emery and Arsenal did not hesitate in executing the transfer as swiftly as possible. And that, alongside the fact that Mkhitaryan was the attacker Emery turned to change the North London Derby in his favour, is a little concerning.

Up until the final day/s of the European window, Mkhitaryan was ostensibly a part of Emery’s plans. And then, suddenly, he wasn’t. There are plenty of reasons as to why he should not have been, most of them financial, but Arsenal are now relying on young prospects like Reiss Nelson, Emile Smith Rowe and Gabriel Martinelli to fill out the wing positions.

Usually, I would be quite happy with taking this risk, and even here, I am once more. But it is a little troubling that Emery chose to introduce Mkhitaryan and not Nelson or Joe Willock or even Bukayo Saka or Martinelli in Sunday’s North London Derby. If he believed that Mkhitaryan provides him with a better chance of winning that game, why, a day later, did he so swiftly send the attacker out on loan?

Loaning out Mkhitaryan is the right decision, make no mistake about it. But if I do have one concern regarding the transfer, it is this: Why did he, and not Nelson or Willock or others, play against Spurs? Hopefully, the answer is not what I fear it might be.