Arsenal are a team that have pulled themselves up from a decade of despair in recent seasons to reclaim their spot among the Premier League elite.
They have gone from languishing in mid-table and missing out on Champions League football for six years to challenging Liverpool and Manchester City for the league title, an achievement made possible by their savvy business in the transfer market.
Under the guidance of Mikel Arteta and Edu, the Gunners have become shrewd operators in the market and have, on the whole, spent their money well, even if they still struggle to sell well.
That said, they have come on leaps and bounds since the final years of the Arsène Wenger era, when they sold a player for just £4m who has gone on to win multiple league titles and even outscored Bukayo Saka last season, Serge Gnabry.
Serge Gnabry at Arsenal
The uber-talented winger joined the Gunners' youth setup in July 2011 from German side Stuttgart and impressed those who watched him in north London, scoring 12 goals and providing eight assists in just 38 appearances for the U21 side.
He was so effective for the youth sides that he began getting chances to cameo for the first team as well.
The dynamic attacker made his debut in the League Cup Third Round tie against Coventry City on the 26th of September 2012, coming off the bench for 18 minutes. And while he failed to make an impact in that game, he was given a start in the next round, when the Gunners played out their famous 7-5 win over Reading.
Over the next few years, Gnabry would make 18 underwhelming appearances for the first team before ultimately being sent out on loan to West Bromwich Albion for the 2015/16 season, a move that infamously led to Tony Pulis claiming he wasn't "at that level to play the games" for the Baggies.
Unsurprisingly, the Stuttgart native was recalled back to Arsenal halfway through the campaign before finally being sold to Werder Bremen in the summer for a fee in the region of £4m, which has to be one of the worst sales in the club's history.
Serge Gnabry after Arsenal
Despite having, by all accounts, a dreadful 2015/16 season, Gnabry looked like a player reborn in his first year with Werder Bremen, scoring 11 goals and providing two assists in 27 appearances, which was enough to convince Bayern Munich that he was worth signing.
The Bavarians only had to pay €8m – about £7m – to activate his release clause.
Once the deal was done, they sent him straight out on loan to Hoffenheim, where he continued to impress, netting ten times and providing eight assists in 27 appearances.
He finally made his Bayern debut in the 2018/19 season and once again hit the ground running, scoring 13 goals and providing nine assists in 42 appearances, a campaign so impressive that talent scout Jacek Kulig labelled him a "future legend."
In all, the "clinical finisher", as data analyst Ben Mattison dubbed him, has scored 82 goals and provided 51 assists in 229 appearances for FC Hollywood, meaning he has averaged a goal involvement every 1.72 games since making the move from Bremen – the kind of output Arsenal are crying out for at the moment.
Last season might just have been his most impressive yet, and his return of 17 goals and 12 assists in 47 appearances was actually better than Saka's 15 goals and 11 assists in 48 appearances for the Gunners.
Gnabry
Saka
47
48
17
15
12
11
0.61
0.54
Granted, the German maestro has scored only one goal for the Bundesliga behemoths this season, but he has been beset with significant injury after significant injury.
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ByJack Salveson HolmesFeb 8, 2024
Ultimately, when it comes to the worst sales in Arsenal's history, you'd be hard-pressed to find one worse than Gnabry due to his unreal career in Germany.