Despite the suspensions, injuries and nightmare run of fixtures, it has been a brilliant month or so for Arsenal.
Due to his ankle injury, Mikel Arteta’s side have been without club captain Martin Odegaard for some of their most challenging games of the season, against Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain.
However, the North Londoners have come out the other side practically unscathed, level on points with City in the Premier League and undefeated in the Champions League.
There have been plenty of fantastic performers over the last few weeks. Still, perhaps one of the stand-outs has been Leandro Trossard, who, as we all know, only joined the club following the failed pursuit of Chelsea flop Mykhailo Mudryk, but there was another star the club were interested in at the time as well.
Trossard's Arsenal record
Trossard joined Arsenal in January 2023 for a relatively minor fee of around £27m from fellow Premier League side Brighton & Hove Albion, and to say he has since exceeded expectations in North London would be a vast understatement.
In his first half-season for the club, the Belgian international racked up a seriously impressive haul of one goal and ten assists in just 22 appearances, equating to a goal involvement every other game, even though he was in an entirely new environment.
The following season saw the 29-year-old become more of a goalscorer than a provider, as in his 46 appearances for the club, he found the back of the net on 17 occasions and produced two assists for good measure, meaning that he maintained an average of a goal involvement once every 2.42 games for a team that came painfully close to winning the league.
This year has seen the 37-capped international go through yet another overhaul in how he plays for the team, as the absence of Martin Odegaard has seen him both fill in as one of the leading creators in midfield and form an interchanging strike partnership with Kai Havertz when the team revert to a 4-4-2 shape.
So far, Trossard has scored twice and provided one assist in his eight games this season, and while he did get himself sent off against City, he has generally been excellent, so it was a real stroke of luck that Arsenal signed him and not Mudryk or the other young star they were targeting in January 2023.
Arsenal's interest in Mudryk and Felix
Yes, as most of us are well aware of by now, before he joined Chelsea for a ludicrous fee of around £89m, Mudryk was one of Arsenal’s top priorities, with reports suggesting that Edu Gaspar had flown out to Poland to hold a meeting with the player’s representatives. Luckily, nothing came of it.
However, alongside this interest in the Ukranian, the Gunners were also in with a shout of landing Portuguese international João Félix.
An article from The Athletic on the 2nd of January revealed that, among other English clubs, the North Londoners had been offered the services of the then 23-year-old and were seriously considering bringing him in to help with their surprise title charge.
However, as they did with Mudryk, the Blues beat them to the punch and brought him in on a six-month loan, during which he didn’t do an awful lot, scoring just four goals in 20 appearances and picking up a red card on his debut.
The following season saw the former Benfica ace join Barcelona on loan, where he did a little better, racking up ten goals and six assists in 44 games, before finally getting himself a permanent move back to Chelsea this summer for a rather hefty fee of £46.3m.
Now, unlike his Ukranian teammate in West London, there is no doubt that the 24-year-old “genius”, as dubbed by Roma sporting director Tiago Pinto, is an incredibly talented player, but he hasn’t really shown that in recent years, and when you compare his output to Trossard’s over the last couple of seasons, there is no competition.
For example, the Belgian has racked up a haul of 20 goals and 13 assists since January 2023; in the same period, the Viseu-born ace has produced 15 goals and seven assists, while the Blues’ £89m man has just seven goals and six assists to his name.
Appearances
76
69
64
Goals
20
15
7
Assists
13
7
6
Goal Involvements per Match
0.43
0.31
0.20
Ultimately, it’s undeniable that Arsenal dodged a bullet regarding Mudryk, and while Felix has shown far more over the last few years, Trossard has been by far the best player of the three since he joined the North Londoners in 2023.
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