Arsenal will regret allowing Serge Gnabry to escape to the Bundesliga

Speaking about his time at Chelsea in the midst of his successful spell with Wolfsburg, Kevin De Bruyne said: “Maybe it would have all gone differently if Chelsea had paid €45million for me instead of €8million to Genk back in 2012. I would have had a different standing, and got more chances. In the end, I have to say that, at that time, Chelsea were not good for me.”

It’s possible that Serge Gnabry feels something similar about his time at Arsenal. Much like De Bruyne, Gnabry left the Premier League with only a handful of senior appearances to his name.

He is now excelling in the Bundesliga, with his breakout 2016-17 season seeing him score 11 goals in 27 appearances for Werder Bremen – the same club with whom De Bruyne made his name on loan four seasons earlier.

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Gnabry’s creative displays for Bremen earned him a transfer to Bayern Munich in the summer, though he is currently on a temporary deal at Hoffenheim where he scored a goal from roughly 40 yards at the weekend.

While it would be premature to suggest that Gnabry is following in De Bruyne’s footsteps, the 22-year-old has certainly gained a comparable boost from leaving England. He only cost Arsenal £100,000 when he moved from VfB Stuttgart as opposed to De Bruyne’s €8million, but for a while he looked more likely to succeed in the Premier League than his Belgian counterpart.

Having made his senior debut in 2012 after a string of exciting performances at academy level, Gnabry threatened a breakout in the 2013-14 campaign. Two performances stand out from that season: the game against Swansea in which he finished a fantastic passing move for his first senior goal, as well as an FA Cup tie against Tottenham in which he produced a superb final ball to set up Santi Cazorla.

Unfortunately, just as he was making waves, Gnabry was sidelined with a serious knee injury. Out for most of the following season, he was forced to work on his rehabilitation when he could have been staking a first-team claim.

Having excelled as both an attacking midfielder and a winger, Gnabry was pushed down the pecking order by the arrival of Alexis Sanchez at Arsenal. He also found himself competing for game time with Theo Walcott, Joel Campbell and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, though in hindsight Arsenal fans might wonder how Gnabry ended up being the man on the bench.

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While Arsene Wenger cannot necessarily be blamed for struggling to accommodate Gnabry at a time when he was recovering from injury, whoever made the final decision to loan him to West Bromwich Albion in 2015-16 has much to answer for. Not only did Gnabry face a mere 12 minutes of Premier League action with the Baggies, he was scorned by Tony Pulis and must have taken a battering to his confidence before the unhappy loan was cut short.

Pulis’ assertion that Gnabry was “not at the level to play” for West Brom was hardly genius man management, but nor was it a stroke of genius to loan a creative talent to a side slogging it out in the lower-mid table. It would be the last act of Gnabry’s time at Arsenal, with the youngster leaving for Bremen the following summer despite Wenger stating his desire for him to stay.

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Now, when Wenger looks back, he may well regret not doing more to stop Gnabry leaving for the Bundesliga. Convincing promises of game time may have been enough to retain the Stuttgart-born prospect, but ultimately overcrowding in the squad drove an excellent young player away.

Considering that many of the senior players who blocked Gnabry’s route to the first team have either left or look likely to leave Arsenal imminently, the sight of the 22-year-old signing terms with Bayern – or scoring screamers for Hoffenheim – should trouble the Arsenal boss. Though Gnabry no doubt feels that he learnt much during his time at Arsenal, both good and bad, the development he made at the Emirates could now return huge rewards for someone else.