Why Arsenal have made the right move by offloading Henrikh Mkhitaryan
It may have come as a surprise to many but a few hours after coming on as a late sub in the north London derby, Henrikh Mkhitaryan was on his way to Rome, with Arsenal having sealed a loan move for the Armenian.
Arsenal’s bitter rivals Manchester United had just sent so many of their players to Italy a few days before, which was a quick reminder of how Mkhitaryan found himself at Arsenal in the first place.
The Armenian was part of one of the most high-profile swap deals in Premier League history alongside Alexis Sanchez, who went the other way.
However, this was a swap deal that ultimately did not work out for either party. Mkhitaryan came in prominence after signing for Borussia Dortmund from Shakhtar Donetsk while Jurgen Klopp was in charge but he never really got going under the German.
It was only under his successor, Thomas Tuchel, that he found his feet with a remarkable season in 2015/16, where he scored 23 goals and registered 32 assists in all competition, which are simply mind-boggling numbers.
This earned him a move to Manchester United, where he never really got going but had an incredible turn at the start of 2017 as he had another fantastic Europa League campaign with United and was the main man from the second half of the 2016/17 season and start of the 17/18 season.
He went through a very poor run towards the end of that year, however, and he was sold to Arsenal. He did not get any closer to finding his feet at Arsenal as he only registered 9 assists and 13 goals in his 59 appearances at the club.
Ever since his move to England, he’s been a bit of a peripheral figure, sometimes not affecting the game in any way.
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This could’ve been due to a lack of confidence but it seems that no manager has been able to capture the form that Tuchel managed to get out of him and it’s best that Arsenal offloaded him as he didn’t look any closer to capturing that form under Unai Emery or Arsene Wenger.
He had a very poor game against Newcastle at the start of the season and was a redundant sub in his final game for Arsenal.