Arsenal were claimed to have turned down the chance to sign Dejan Kulusevski in January despite following him closely over the last two years, ultimately allowing him to join Tottenham, but was it really a mistake?
It would be easy to see his form and think we made a major blunder, but looking at our current first-choice XI and our squad overall, his signing would hardly have made sense.
Assuming we did sign him, there is little reason to believe that he would have picked up many minutes in our team with the Emile Smith Rowe already being limited to the bench due to the form of Gabriel Martinelli, Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard, while Nicolas Pepe is also waiting in the wings for minutes despite being our club’s all-time record signing.
Kulusevski would have to have shown enough in a short amount of time in training to convince us that he should get his chance, and would then have to have tried to show what he can do on the pitch in limited substitute appearances, which would have been unlikely.
It is easy to look narrow-mindedly at his form at Spurs, who play in a different system to us regardless, and believe we dropped the ball on a player we scouted extensively (as reported by TheAthletic, but a little bit of lateral thought would lead you down the line to believe his signing in January would only have been for the future, and we would have likely lost out to Spurs who were more actively looking to throw him into the first-team.
Do any of you actually believe Arteta would have given him the chance to start over ESR, Martinelli, Saka or Odegaard after a short time in north London?
Patrick