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Ex-Arsenal star with chance to show he’s learned lesson after “saying really bad things”
A LOOK BACK: Matteo Guendouzi’s Arsenal exit was long and drawn out after a Premier League game against Brighton left the midfielder with no way back under Mikel Arteta
Three years on from his last Premier League appearance, Matteo Guendouzi has been linked with a return which would allow him to put the past behind him.
The French international joined Arsenal under Unai Emery and has been mentioned in connection with Emery’s Aston Villa. West Ham has also been suggested as a potential destination – ironically as a replacement for Declan Rice, who remains a target for Arsenal as they look to strengthen ahead of a Champions League return.
If Guendouzi finds himself back in England, attention is like to be paid to the manner in which his Gunners career fell apart. The beginning of the end came against Brighton during Project Restart in June 2020, and it’ll be time for the midfielder to prove his behaviour that day was simply the work of a chippy 21-year-old rather than anything for any new employer to worry about.
Before the Premier League went on hiatus in March 2020, Guendouzi had been a prominent member of Arsenal’s squad. He had featured in 22 of their 28 games, starting 17, and played every minute of their FA Cup run.
It wasn’t just Emery, then, who trusted the youngster. Arteta gave Guendouzi his first 90-minute run-out against Chelsea in December 2019, and handed him starts against Manchester City and Brighton when the league returned in June.
The trip to City was tough for the entire Arsenal team, with David Luiz having a particularly tough outing in the 3-0 defeat, but the Brighton game offered a chance for redemption. Arsenal did take the lead, with Nicolas Pepe on target, but the Seagulls turned things around in a fiery game before Guendouzi lost his cool.
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Every good story needs a villain. Sometimes, though, there’s room for two villains – maybe even more.
If you ask an Arsenal fan about the game at the Amex Stadium, they’ll more than likely mention Neal Maupay before anyone else. The Seagulls striker played a part in a clash which saw Bernd Leno forced off injured, and rounded off his day of villainy with a last-gasp winner.
It’s a different story if you ask Maupay himself, though. In his case, Guendouzi was the bad guy – considering Guendouzi grabbed his compatriot by the throat, some might see where he was coming from.
“Some of Arsenal’s players need to learn humility,” Maupay said after his team’s victory. “They have been talking a lot first half, second half when they were 1-0 up. They got what they deserved.
“Especially one of them. I mean he was talking the whole game but was saying really bad things, I don’t want to say what he said because I could be in trouble. It was in French because he is French.
“So when I scored I just needed to say ‘that’s what happens when you talk too much on the pitch,” the forward added. While he didn’t name Guendouzi directly, few who watched the game were left in any doubt about the target of Maupay’s ire.
Guendouzi didn’t even make the bench for any of Arsenal’s remaining league matches. The same went for the FA Cup, where the regular for the opening rounds was nowhere to be seen as Arteta’s side beat Chelsea to lift the trophy.
The same applied at the start of the 2020-21 season, when the midfielder wasn’t part of the matchday 18 to face Fulham, and he completed a loan move to Hertha Berlin soon after. During his time in Germany, Guendouzi’s comments didn’t show a great deal of regret.
“It was a gesture that I should have maybe not done,” Guendouzi told France Football. That’s as close as he came to admitting real fault, though.
“It might have shocked a few people, yes, but you know, in the Champions League or in a local match, during the games, there is always a lot of frustration,” he continued. “We always want to win. And, during bad results, or injustices or things said on the pitch that you sometimes don’t like, you can, sometimes, have bad reactions.
“There are things like that, five or six times per match. It is not malicious. There was not a problem with the FA, I was never suspended. It is always in the obsession around winning, to help your team.”
Since accepting his Arsenal career was over, Guendouzi has been able to finally kick-start his career. Two seasons with Marseille – one on loan and one after a permanent switch – have brought two top-three finishes in Ligue 1, and if he sticks around he will have another chance to impress in the Champions League.
Maupay, meanwhile, has been less productive in the years since. A pair of steady seasons saw him fail to improve on the 10 league goals he scored in 2019-20, and he bagged just one last term after a big-money move to Everton.
Guendouzi also established himself in a competitive French senior squad, making Didier Deschamps’ World Cup squad and starting the group game against Tunisia. A handful of games with the Marseille captain’s armband, meanwhile, point to a level of trust he never appeared to earn in England.
Back in 2022, Marseille’s then-manager Jorge Sampaoli said Guendouzi was “on his way to becoming one of the best midfielders in the world.” While there might still be work to do on that front, a return to the Premier League would offer a chance to show how far he has come in the last three years.
