Arsenal faces reintegrating Maitland-Niles back into the squad

Arsenal faces the prospect of reintegrating Ainsley Maitland-Niles back into their squad next season as he struggles at AS Roma.

The England international had been struggling to play regularly in London and he wanted to move to another club.

The Gunners convinced him to stay in the first half of this season and promised to give him more playing time.

However, that never happened, and inevitably, he left the club in the last transfer window.

A move to AS Roma was too good an opportunity to turn down, but he is one of the reasons Jose Mourinho’s side is struggling now.

The Sun claims his poor performances mean he is more likely to return to the Emirates than to sign a permanent deal with the Italian club.

This means he would have to return to a club he ran away from and it could be an awkward reunion.

Just Arsenal Opinion

Maitland-Niles was confident that he deserved to be playing regularly and relentlessly pursued the move to the Italian side.

He still wants to always play, and his struggles in Italy could be because of Mourinho’s tactics.

However, Arsenal has done well without him in the squad, and they might sell him or send him out on loan to another club in the summer.

Tags Ainsley Maitland-Niles

14 Comments

  1. Well,that will increase their need to sign xhaka which can help us earn about 15-20million euros.as for amn he can move on to another club on loan or permanently for nothing less than 10million pound.

  2. Feel bad for him tbh – if he’d stayed he would likely have got some chances in midfield as he’d done well earlier in the season.

    Now he’s apparently being used to fill in other positions, which was always his gripe, it seems, and not doing great.

  3. After two underwhelming or less than convincing loan stints, I fear this will be the end of the road for ANM. He probably deserves another chance to resurrect his career with the help of the other young guns from Hale End. Not sure if the gaffer will be in a position to be patient though. I would sell him for 10M in the summer. In hindsight, it was a mistake not to sell the player two years ago for over 20M, when his value was high; another 10M loss.

  4. Not a problem, Mikel said he didn’t want to stand in AMN’s way for the opportunity to work with Mourhino, try football in another country and get some game time this season, not that he didn’t want him

    We should welcome him back with open arms in the summer, if that’s what happens but probably too early to call that right now

    Could be a valuable squad member for next season

  5. Didn’t Wolves want to give us up to 20 mil for him ayesr or 2 ago and it fell through because AMN was promised to be part of our plans?

  6. his best play was as a full back. He insists that he is a midfielder and that isn’t showing across leagues and loans. If he were willing to be a squad player, he can be a great swiss army knife, as he can fit in multiple spots.

    Based on what has happened to date he is not a top-flight midfielder.

    Too bad we didn’t get the 20 million…

    1. @Stewart Macintosh
      And yet, his last run in midfield earned him MOTM. Something he never got while playing fullback…

      1. I remember Sagna, Monreal all getting MOTM performances in one of 2 games that they were deployed as CB’s when we were struggling with injuries.
        I also remember Xhaka being played at RB in a game and be was magnificent.
        I remember Ceballos getting MOTM in his first game at Arsenal.
        I remember Carl Jenkinson getting MOTM once if I can remember.
        It’s like saying “Auba just scored 2 goals against valencia, this proves Arteta was wrong to get rid of him.
        Willock has had some good games for Newcastle.
        That’s not how it works. You have got to have a bigger sample size than just an insolated game in years.

  7. his whole professional career thus far has been a bit of a head scratcher…not sure if that’s on him for refusing to be more flexible when it came to his positional wants and demands or if it’s more on our club for not coaching him up enough, as it was clear that he had a couple obvious deficiencies in his game that never seemed to improve over time…if the remainder of his loan continues in this same lackluster fashion we can only hope that someone else might offer us a fraction of what was previously on offer so that we can finally move on and have something to show for his time here

  8. He will not be coming back, unless temporarily to leave to go somewhere else, ASAP.

    NO possible chance of him EVER becoming a first choice for us again OR of staying for longer than it takes to sell him
    or loan. Hope Roma buy him, though that looks doubtful now.
    I WAS ALWAYS AMAZED that Mourinho seemed to rate him highly . Most of us do not.

    1. @jon fox
      Big difference there, Mourinho is a professional football manager, while”the rest of you” are just armchair wannabe managers…

      1. Just because Mourinho is a professional manager does not make him the objective professional template that we should all use as the guage to determine what should constitutes a professional manager.
        He has been sacked more than any other manager since “Big Sam”..
        Very professional.

  9. Really odd comment. How many “professional football managers” rate this player? What top level teams has he been linked to?
    His performances for his current team have been underwhelming. So far, the “armchair wannabes” are being proved right.

  10. bar few exceptions AW never liked to bring back a player who had left and asked for it,having realised that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side because it sent the wrong message to the other players.MA should do the same IMHO.

Comments are closed

Top Blog Sponsors