The best player each Premier League club has had on loan. Simple as that. Only rule: only loans while they were in the Premier League count, which proved far more restrictive than we had naively originally thought and that we now bitterly regret. On we go, then.
ARSENAL – Martin Odegaard
Arsenal do not have a great history with loans. Arsene Wenger’s naked mistrust of the loan system meant that across their first 27 Premier League seasons, Arsenal brought in just ten players on temporary deals and one of those was Kim Kallstrom. Another one was Thierry Henry, which was lovely and all but he played a total of 161 minutes in his brief second spell at the club. Arsenal love loans now, though. They’ve had six in the five seasons since, including two years experiencing the unique delights of Dani Ceballos. There was also Denis Suarez, and Pablo Mari. So it’s still not a total triumph. Martin Odegaard, though. That’s turned out well. hasn’t it?
His actual loan spell, in the second half of the 2020/21 season, was decent rather than spectacular, but what’s happened since would make it a clear winner even if the rest of Arsenal’s loan signings weren’t awful shit. Odegaard joined permanently in the summer of 2021 and is now the inspirational club captain and playmaker doing much of the heavy lifting to propel Arsenal ever onward in their unlikely title tilt.
It’s also really quite lovely to see Odegaard turn out to be genuinely properly good, because for the longest time he appeared to be walking the hackneyed path of “child prodigy scooped up at irresponsibly young age by Superclub, struggles to adapt, washed up at 22.” We thought he was going to be another Freddy Adu, basically, a player we remain convinced was entirely invented by nefarious Big Media just so they could do “Much Adu About Nothing” headlines.
ASTON VILLA – James Milner
Did an absolutely wild amount of loaning in 2018/19 to get back up to the Premier League and had a very decent hit rate. Tammy Abraham hit 25 goals in the Championship and another against West Brom in the play-off semi-final, while Tyrone Mings wasn’t a bad shout either.
But none of that was in the Premier League so none of it counts, and their post-promotion efforts have not been as good. Ross Barkley? Ross fucking Barkley? And the initial excitement about Philippe Coutinho wore off fast, didn’t it? Long before they totally spoiled it by making it a permanent move. So it’s all the way…
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