Arsenal made a mistake with Matteo Guendouzi loan deal

With Work Guendouzi Could Have Been a Valuable Tool at Arsenal

Guendouzi would have had to have been spoken to, and he would have had to show that he had grown and that this new player might have fit in so well in the rotation that the Gunners.

He would have looked marvelous in rotation with Thomas Partey, Albert Sambi Lokonga and Ainsley Maitland-Niles, especially without Granit Xhaka, who remains a long-term absentee. Xhaka’s replacement has been whispered as Denis Zakaria of Borussia Monchengladbach, and that might still be a great investment, yet Guendouzi was also ‘house money’, as it were.

Should he have been convinced to stay on, the team might have had a great wealth of talent at that central midfield position, with or without Zakaria, Tyler Adams or whoever else may be brought in.

Arteta likely realizes this now to some degree, just like he knows that he made the same mistake with Mavropanos, who is proving himself to be a quite superb centre-back at Stuttgart. He should be coming back to Arsenal next season, just like Saliba, and just like Guendouzi. However, only one will be, while the other two will find growth and success in Germany and France respectively.

It would have been a shock to see the 22-year-old return, but it would have been best for all parties, sans Marseille. Guendouzi will leave a certain amount of business permanently unfinished with Arsenal, and the club, who found him when he was still a teenager, may well miss out on a great young player who with some focus could become a great talent one day.

Everyone in north London will regret it that he had slipped through their grasp, even as they had initially found and developed him upon his move from France to England as a teenager. That’s the breaks, unfortunately, and while Arsenal has straightened themselves out to a degree, the loss of Mavropanos and Guendouzi is a lot to bear, even if the players we have in their stead are also young and highly gifted too.