Striker who is ‘like Alexis Sanchez’ seemingly won’t be Arsenal’s new Serge Gnabry – Our View

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As good as Arsenal’s academy is. It’s fair to say that sometimes they get it wrong with their young stars.

For every Bukayo Saka that comes through, you have a Serge Gnabry who gets away and for every Emile Smith Rowe that stars in midfield, you have an Eberechi Eze who could have competed for that same spot.

The Gunners have every right to kick themselves for losing out on these talents, but it seems as though their decision to let one player go wasn’t as bad as it looked earlier this year.

Indeed, the London club infamously sold Donyell Malen to PSV back in 2017 for just £500,000 and at one point it looked as though that would go down as one of the biggest mistakes in the club’s history.

Malen was lighting up the Eredivisie last season. He netted 19 goals for PSV and he followed that up with a few bright performances at Euro 2020.

It wasn’t a shock when Borussia Dortmund came calling this summer. After all, the 22-year-old looked like a star in the making, but since moving to Germany, things haven’t quite worked out for Malen.

Indeed, while he was prolific in the Netherlands, he’s yet to score a league goal for Dortmund despite playing in seven games so far.

The Eredivisie can be something of a misleading league at times, especially for attacking players. Just looks at someone like Alireza Jahanbakhsh, he was the Dutch league’s Golden Boot winner before joining Brighton, but he scored just four goals in three seasons with the Seagulls.

Players like Afonso Alves and Jozy Altidore have also flopped after shining brightly in the Eredivisie after moving to a top league, and while it is early days for Malen, it looks as though he could be a similar story.

Could Arsenal have gotten more than £500,000 for the striker who was described as being ‘like Alexis Sanchez’ as a youngster? Of course they could have, but will Malen go on to be a world superstar who Arsenal live to regret losing for years to come like Serge Gnabry? It looks unlikely right now.

Losing Malen for pittance will surely still sting for Arsenal and their fans, but the fact he’s struggling in Germany does provide some comfort in that the Gunners seemingly don’t have another Gnabry-level disaster on their hands.