As good as Arsenal’s youth system has been in recent years, the Gunners have had their fair share of nightmare stories in terms of letting incredible talents go.
The likes of Serge Gnabry and Ismael Bennacer have made Arsenal look silly as they’ve become stars after leaving the Emirates, and it looked as though the Gunners had another mistake on their hands with Donyell Malen.
Indeed, Malen was lighting up the Eredivisie with PSV after leaving Arsenal, scoring no fewer than 27 goals in all competitions during his final season in Eindhoven.
Of course, his brilliant form in the Netherlands caught the attention of some of Europe’s top clubs, and a €30m (£25m) move to Borussia Dortmund was on the cards that summer.
Arsenal fans were despairing as another former Gunner was set to become a star after being cast aside by the north London club, but since joining Dortmund, Malen has shown exactly why Arsenal didn’t keep hold of Malen.
Since heading over to the Bundesliga, Malen has scored just five goals in 30 Bundesliga games – a poor return for a striker, and it seems as though his remarkable numbers in the Eredivisie was just another example of a player ripping it up in a below-par league.
We’ve seen it so many times before, in fact, the list of Eredivisie Golden Boot winners is a who’s who of Premier League flops and players who couldn’t cut it at the top level, from Luuk de Jong and Alireza Jahanbakhsh all the way to Afonso Alves and Vincent Janssen.
Malen, quite simply, doesn’t look like a player equipped to play for a club like Dortmund or Arsenal, and while the Gunners probably could have made more money on a player like Malen, their decision to ditch him as a youngster looks to have been the right call.
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