The Gunners have looked like a team reborn since returning from their midwinter break, and with four impressive wins on the bounce, they have well and truly reentered the Premier League title race.
The north Londoners' frontline are firing once more, although as deadly as they are starting to look, there is a former Gooner who left the club as a youngster who's looked even better this season.
Arsenal's Attacking Output
Player
Gabriel Jesus
Gabriel Martinelli
Leandro Trossard
Appearances
23
28
28
Goals
8
7
9
Assists
5
3
2
All Stats via Transfermarkt
In fact, this player has outscored Gabriel Martinelli and Leandro Trossard this campaign while equaling Gabriel Jesus' tally across all competitions, having been sold for a cut-price fee.
Donyell Malen's time at Arsenal
The man in question is none other than Borussia Dortmund's red-hot Dutchman, Donyell Malen.
Now, there might be quite a few fans out there who had no idea that the Wieringen-born dynamo was ever even an Arsenal player to begin with, and considering he never made a competitive first-team appearance, that'd be understandable.
Malen joined the Gunners' youth setup from Ajax's academy in July 2015 and made 57 appearances across the U23, U18, and UEFA Youth League sides, scoring 18 goals and providing nine assists along the way.
He made a couple of appearances in friendlies when Arsenal toured Australia in the summer of 2017, but with no clear way into the first team, he was sold to Dutch side PSV, with The Athletic later revealing that he was sold for just £200k.
Donyell Malen's European adventure
Malen spent most of the 2017/18 season plying his trade with PSV's youth sides, but he did make four short cameos that year, with his first coming in an Eredivisie game against PEC Zwolle on February 3rd.
However, he'd finally get his chance in the first team the following season as he scored 11 goals and provided five assists in 42 games, which he then followed up with 44 goals and 19 assists in 70 appearances across the following two campaigns.
Unsurprisingly, with form as impressive as this, the "sizzling" forward, as described by U23 scout Antonio Mango, was starting to turn heads in Europe's top five leagues, and so in the summer of 2021, German giants Borussia Dortmund signed him for a fee of around £26m.
Unfortunately for the talented forward, his first two years in Germany, while not terrible by any stretch of the imagination, were slightly underwhelming, and he returned just 19 goals and 14 assists in 73 appearances. However, this was also partly due to the 18 games he missed for club and country through injury during those seasons.
Donyell Malen's Post-Arsenal Record
Club
PSV
Dortmund
Appearances
116
101
Goals
55
29
Assists
24
17
All Stats via TransfermarktHowever, this season has seen the "unstoppable" 25-year-old, as talent scout Jacek Kulig described him, return to the sort of form that earned him his move to Signal Iduna Park to begin with, as he has already racked up ten goals and three assists in just 28 appearances, with nine of those goals coming in just 20 Bundesliga games.
In comparison, Trossard has just 11 goal involvements in 28 appearances, Martinelli has ten, and Jesus equals Malen's 13, although he has scored fewer goals.
What likely frustrates the Arsenal board more than anything, though, is that since selling the Dutchman for just £200k, his valuation has skyrocketed 25400%, as according to the CIES Football Observatory, the former Gooner is now worth around €60m, which, is roughly £51m, or £50.8m more than the north Londoners sold him for almost seven years ago.
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Ultimately, while he might not have been the leading man in Arteta's current side, his apparent talent would've surely been valuable in what looks like a nail-biting title race.
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