The Premier League academy players who got away

With Chelsea Twitter losing its sh*t about the possibility of Levi Colwill leaving on a permanent deal while Arsenal fret themselves daft over Charlie Patino’s absence from the squad list for the pre-season tour of the US and Spurs consider an expensive correction of their own past mistakes, it seems an opportune time to once again dust off the old ‘one that got away’ feature. Why not, eh?

Now we weren’t exactly sure how to qualify it but we didn’t want players who had great careers at their first clubs and then went on to even better things, so we’ve capped it at 15 Premier League appearances for their original club for reasons that will become self-justifying in due course. Other than it’s simple: the ‘winner’ is the suitable current active player with the highest market value as calculated by the hero-nerds at transfermarkt.co.uk, without whom we would be forever lost.

Arsenal: Serge Gnabry
Then: 10 Premier League appearances
Now: 171 Bundesliga appearances for Werder Bremen, Hoffenheim and Bayern Munich; 34 Germany caps; 1x Champions League winner, 4x Bundesliga winner

That’s a good start, isn’t it? This goes rapidly downhill from here, I should warn you. Not all of these are going to be players who had famously disastrous loan spells at West Brom before going on to win the Champions League and multiple Bundesliga titles, just so you know.

Aston Villa: Callum Robinson
Then: 4 Premier League appearances
Now: 44 Premier League appearances for Sheffield United and West Brom; 189 Championship appearances for Bristol City, Preston and West Brom; 30 Ireland caps

See?

Bournemouth: Alexandru Dobre
Then: 1 FA Cup appearance
Now: 22 Ligue 1 and 28 Ligue 2 appearances for Dijon

You can’t move these days for Bournemouth fans rueing the day Dobre was lost to them. They still talk in hushed tones of his 10-minute cameo in the 4-0 FA Cup third-round win against Luton, or that time his mere presence on the bench at Stamford Bridge spooked Chelsea so badly that the Cherries were able to scamper off with a 1-0 win. Plucked away from Bournemouth by Dijon in 2020 where his adequacy defies any and all attempts at mustard puns.

Brentford: Tyrick Mitchell
Then: 0 first-team appearances
Now: 59 Premier League appearances for Crystal Palace; 2 England caps

Bloody hell, lads. Proof that even a club with a system and development plan as good and successful as Brentford can still drop a great big massive bollock when it comes to working out which…