Arsenal: 7 pre-season players in line for transfer departures

5. Ainsley Maitland-Niles – Midfielder

Interested clubs: Crystal Palace, Southampton, Leeds, Everton

While the caveat of sample size and competitive level is needed, Ainsley Maitland-Niles won’t have done himself any harm with his 45 minute outing against Rangers.

Coming into midfield he was lively and proactive, demanding possession and feeding the wide players with pace and direction. Rangers were pegged back making his job easier, yet it was a comfortable showing from him following an okay outing against Hibernian.

There are faint murmurs of interested Premier League clubs with no concrete movement yet, and the likelihood is that Maitland-Niles’ agent is running through the offers being floated around to see who is willing to dish out the most alluring deal. His versatility alone will be enough to attract admiring glances.

Arsenal should be getting a decent fee, perhaps around the £15m mark, for the 23-year-old who you imagine is using every minute he has on the pitch in pre-season to raise his profile.

That is also unfair as being an Arsenal lad he will surely still harbour dreams of playing in midfield for his boyhood club, despite Arteta seeming to think otherwise.

Or, if we’re hypothesising, does two fixtures playing in central midfield perhaps hint to some different ideas brewing in the Spaniard’s mind?