Charlie Patino’s move highlights the difficulty of making the final step

Morning.

Let’s start today with the news that young midfielder Charlie Patino is set to join Deportivo la Coruna for a fee of around £1m. Some will consider that quite low, and I suppose it is in the English market, but for a player going to a Spanish second division club – and one which has had serious financial issues over the last few years – it’s about what you would expect for a player who still has a lot to prove.

One of the shining stars at youth level, Patino has had two loan spells (at Blackpool and Swansea) which saw him play semi-regularly enough but not convince. Last season at Swansea he barely featured in the second half of the season, and this summer when so many of Arsenal’s senior players weren’t available and the squad needed to be filled with Academy players, he was left out completely. That told you pretty clearly his future lay elsewhere.

Sometimes in football, you have to take a step back to go forward again. The fact that his father is a fan of Depor (he comes from Galicia) is probably a factor in this move too, and hopefully it’s what he needs to really kick on his his career. He’s still only 20, and time is on his side. Arsenal have inserted what I’d imagine is a significant sell-on clause into the deal, so while the fee now might be relatively small, if he develops well and gets a decent move somewhere else down the line, we’ll benefit from that.

However, his situation does highlight just how hard it is to go from one of the hottest youth prospects, someone who everybody talks about with a kind of expectation, to the first team at Arsenal (or any other club for that matter). Patino was certainly one of those who shone at underage level, but who – for various reasons I’m sure – struggled to make the step-up to the senior game. There are so many examples of that guy down the years.

I remember when we were struggling under Mikel Arteta in that bleak late-Autumn/early winter of 2020, and seeing people complain…

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Author : arseblog

Publish date : 2024-08-22 06:35:05

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