According to The Mirror, Charlie Patino will sign for Spanish second-tier side Deportivo La Coruna in a deal worth £1 million.
Tipped for big things as he worked his way through the ranks at Hale End, the midfielder became a regular in first team training at 18 and sent Arsenal fans wild when he scored on his senior debut in a Carabao Cup win over Sunderland in December 2021.
As injuries rocked his squad, Mikel Arteta handed the teenager a first start a couple of weeks later but his performance in a 1-0 FA Cup defeat to Nottingham Forest was nothing to write home about. While he made the bench a few more times in the 21/22 season, that was pretty much the last we saw of him in Arsenal colours.
Patino looked promising on loan at Blackpool in the 2022/23 season, but the writing was on the wall when he wasn’t selected for Arsenal’s pre-season tour last summer. Against the backdrop of big-money arrivals, a loan move to Swansea only delayed the inevitable departure.
As recently as January, there was talk of Juventus and other big European clubs showing an interest in him, so it’s somewhat surprising he’s leaving for Spain’s second division. We say that, knowing full well that he holds a Spanish passport through his father.
The £1 million fee will also raise eyebrows although it’s said Arsenal have agreed to a significant sell-on clause.
In recent transfer windows, Arsenal have made a habit of negotiating such clauses and, while they’ve tended to come at the expense of upfront cash, they are starting to pay dividends.
The Gunners took a slice of Dinos Mavropanos’ move to West Ham, Matteo Guendouzi’s transfer to Lazio and we could bag as much as £6 million this summer from ex-Academy players Omari Hutchinson and Mark McGuinness moving to Ipswich (from Chelsea) and Luton (from Cardiff) respectively.
Good move for him. Good to see him go to a team and city where he has roots and personally knows so it can help him develop
I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a soft spot for La Coruña. Let Patiño kick Arse there.
Good luck to the lad.
Confusing. I kept seeing lovely little snippets of play from his time at Swansea. I thought, at the very least, he was forging a healthy reputation for himself in the championship.
Good luck Charlie. To think, it was only three years ago that he was described as the best youngster to EVER come through the Arsenal academy.
Anyone thinking about a certain Chido?
(Sorry for linking to this old fart rag)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-9974321/Charlie-Patino-17-described-best-youngster-come-Arsenal-Gunners-scout.html
Yeah I think the problem is his physicality. That’s usually why youngsters don’t kick on in the top divisions. Wilshere was small but had remarkable strength to hold bigger players off. Ethan has that too. Charlie doesn’t. Sometimes that’s the glass ceiling.
I heard Charlie had an arm wrestle with Fabio Vieira but a mild gust of wind beat them both.
Whoever told you about that must have missed it that they just kept arm wrestling while floating in the wind together, light as feathers, like two autumn leaves entwined
They might send Adama Traoré to the gym, who knows?
Ozil was kind of similar in his youth but a little taller. I do believe he will become a very good midfielder who all the teams will be after in a couple of years. In England, it is a common practice to rule over a player to be not good enough without giving a chance in the proper level. He is too small, he is too short, he is light weight, he is lazy….
I thought Dan Crowley was the best ever from the academy !
Orobably precusely why chido took the man u offer cos they offered him 30k per week instead of our 15k pw. As a youngster they never know whether injury or development will affect their career. Better grab the money security, then decide on the nect club in a few years’ time.
Was lucky enough to be there for his goal against Sunderland in the Carabao Cup almost three years ago. He exuded such calm on the ball and there was real excitement around him. I hope he fulfils his great promise.
Very disappointing fee but we move.
Hopefully he finds his groove over there.
It’s more than we got for Ramsey, Ozil, Aubameyang, Arshavin, Sagna and Santi combined.
Not exactly apples to apples…
Love that Bowie song…
And I think sometimes simply moving players on for whom things have gone a bit stale is important, and getting some cash now is a bonus rather than waiting on a payout once they prove themselves which might never come
Another one bites the dust…
I remember how the crowd was singing his name before he made his debut. 1 million is a joke.
Patino and Viera so clearly need to put on 15 pounds of (mostly) muscle to be premier league players, which makes me wonder what our nutritionists / trainers are being paid for? Clearly genetics plays a role, but these guys came through the youth set up or arrived at 20 yrs old, so it’s bizarre to me that they haven’t managed or bothered to bulk them up.
Fabio has mentioned it in public statements, he is working on it, but a big part of it is stature. He was I think 139 lbs when he came to us and tops out at 5’7”. In my completely unscientific and subjective estimation, you need to weigh at least 150 lbs in a duel oriented league like the PL. Think about trying to use upper body muscle only to gain > 10 lbs, almost 10% of your total body weight. How long would that take? And even if you get there, is it enough to compensate when you’re so short?… Read more »
Luka Modric was a “light weight”, didn’t do too bad for the label. George Best was tall but skinny and played against worst defenders.
The muscles didn’t stop Peter Crouch nor is it stopping Thomas Muller or Havertz.
Muller and Havertz are wiry and weigh about 75-80 kilos (Crouch OTOH was difficult to bully because of his height). To be fair to Patino he has bulked up a bit since I last saw him.
Patino put on a good chunk of muscle to be fair to the lad. He’s worked hard on his physique.
Anybody who had a “gym-bro” phase in their 20s will know that putting on muscle is relatively easy, but retaining your agility, endurance and speed while do so is incredibly difficult, even more so at his height (6ft). Any increase in upper body weight without an equal increase in tendon/rotator strength is a recipe for injury disaster too as it massively increases the load on the joints with every movement. I always thought Oxlade Chamberlain’s injury issues had a lot to do with him getting so big so young.
“retaining your agility, endurance and speed while do so is incredibly difficult”
You’re overstating the trade-off IMO – the obvious counter-example is that the typical Olympic athlete (outside of long-distance runners) is carrying a *lot* of extra muscle.
Closer to home, almost every PL centre-back is a beast these days.
He grew up a Depor fan so I wish him all the best, and hope for that sweet sell on clause to pay off in a few years.
Now we can afford David Bentley!
Daniel Bentley? Donald Bentley? Who can remember
A Bentley, classy!
Is it just me or our academy from Hale End finds it very difficult to break into the first team. I can foresee only ethan doing tt this season.
Well, they are literally trying to break into one of the best squads in the world – the bar definitely went up over last couple of years in this regard.
Then again, for what it’s worth, in the league’s opening fixture, we had one academy U21 player on the bench (Nwaneri), whereas City had one in the starting line-up (Lewis) and two on the bench (McAtee and O’Reilly) with Bobb not making it due to fresh injury.
Even if you had a full first XI of academy graduates that would only allow for one youth prospect breaking through per year, assuming every player is aged 19-30. Letting players pursue careers elsewhere is part of the game, and I’m sure Patino will make the most of his chance.
I think it’s because our second choices were not strong enough, and MA played mainly first choices, with set rotations. if we are able to dominate teams with our second choices all our players, second choices and academy included will get more exposure, and they will achive better resale prices,
It’s very tough. Not only do they need to beat out a set of very strong senior players, but there’s very little margin for error. One or two ties/losses due to mistakes could be the difference between winning the league and coming second. And sometimes an injury can create a path in, but we fortunately were realtively injury free last year.
Hopefully we get some kinder draws in the cups and can give the kids some time that way.
Are you just realizing this? Our academy “strategy” is a disaster. Sell them for buttons and pray for a measly sell-on clause.
Maybe we are hoping for California size of sell-on results?
Smith Rowe, Balogun, Willock, Martinez, Iwobi There is over £130m of sales there in just 5 players over the last few years. Its costs about £8m per year to operate our academy. So in those 5 sales alone i think the academy strategy is doing very nicely thank you. Add to those the value of Saka, Nketiah, Nelson, Nwaneri you must accept your comment is way off the mark
Peanuts compared to Chelsea, City, Liverpool etc. Also cherry picking the only 5 that we’ve managed to sell on reasonably successfully while disregarding the other 90% that have left for nothing…
All this being said, I will gladly eat my hat if edu manages to extract 30mil from forest for Eddie…😂
Bit of an odd comment to suggest that City, L,pool & Chelsea, or any club, make massive profits on all of their academy players.
I would’ve thought that only a minority of every club’s academy ends up playing at the highest level & therefore end up demanding a high transfer fee.
Also, unfavorably comparing our transfer policy to Chelsea’s over the last few seasons is complete & utter madness
Where did I compare Chelsea’s transfer policy to ours? Instead, I compared Chelsea’s record of developing academy players and successfully bring them thru into their first team allowing them to get excellent returns when selling them. They have a better academy set-up than we do. Pains me to say so but it’s true.
I would put it more like being better judge of potential and good sellers when it comes to young talent.
And so It should be. To break into the Arsenal first team and stay there you need to be a special player. Like Saka, Adams, Davis, Oleary. There are others that get in and get sold to fund the academy for years to come, there are some that get sold for small money or are released for a training and development compensation fee. There are many that do not even get to the scholarship stage. Like Harry Kane, Eze, etc, etc.
That is football get over it.
I think our perceptions have become distorted by Chelsea and City and PSG who have pumped gazillions into their “academy” for years, paying way over what anyone else could for prospects and doing so in volume, so they have a steady stream of top young players now.
That’s not to say Arsenal can’t do better to extract more value from players like Charlie because I think we can. At the same time we can look at Ethan and Saka and be really proud of our academy as well.
Poorly managed… Aterta need to start finding pathways for this young guns… Else they’d all leave… Maybe buy a smaller club in Portugal and give them chances there… The only way to sustain football this day’s are academies… City is a prime example
I partly agree, but that’s not the full picture
The checkbook wins when it comes to who plays in the first team. All that time, effort and money on the academy goes for nought.
Can the checkbook deliver success? No excuses this season.
City poured untold tens of millions into their academy. There is noting pure and virtuous about how they got to this point.
A few years ago that fee would have been shocking, but I guess there wasn’t much of a market for him. At least we are likely to get something down the road from him.
Even the boehly clown show pisses all over us when it comes to how to develop players into the first team and make decent money from them if you end up punting them…
https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/aug/21/gilmour-to-gallagher-chelsea-academy-players-sold-in-the-boehly-era-for-208m
That looks impressive but in the same time we’ve sold Iwobi, Balogun, ESR, Willock, Martinez and a host of less valuable players that I have lost count of including just this close season Biereth. So quite close to £208 million I would imagine. Plus Saka is worth £140M according to Transfermarkt, which is an underestimate (I’d say priceless).
No where near close to 208mil! Biereth went for 4mil.
Sure give us 208 million and we can do the same
I’m aware that’s their reported profit but I wonder if you are aware of how much they spent to get to this point?
Some of that may come out in the investigation of the charges related to the Abramovich era. I might be wrong, but I think that the Clearlake regime has little interest in impeding this investigation and is anxious to blame everything on the past. Quite clearly, Boehly and his friends aren’t engaged in sportswashing like Abramovich; they are in engaged in vulture capitalism. Man City, of course, have every incentive to impede, stall, obfuscate, and appeal (that’s also the name of one of their law firms).
https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/aug/22/bobby-clark-reunited-with-lijnders-at-rb-salzburg-as-liverpool-sell-for-10m
10mil for a 19yr old who made 12 appearances plus 17.5% from any sell on fee. That’s how to do it…
??…
I wish Charlie all the best
I believe the Premiership is physically the most challenging league and some players just don’t have physicality for it. Fabio Viera may prove to be one
I’m old enough to recall that it took time for Paul Davis to cope with physicality of the top English Division. Players like Hoddle and Waddle flourished more abroad than in England
I really hope he does well
Imagine a trip out just to watch Charlie Patino at La Coruna!!!!! That could be some weekend
Why follow a kid that doesnt want to play for us? Can also think of much better places to go than coruna, especially in Spain
The good thing with these sell on fees is that should someone else come in for him, we can match or even beat their bid and pay less, if we wanted him back and if he wanted to return.
I dont know why so many people are down on the club over the treatment of Patino? He had opportunities at Blackpool and Swansea and couldnt nail down a regular starting role despite the odd motm performance. He was a disruptive element at u21 level and clearly thought he was better than he was. The club have easily recouped what they have invested into this young player and if he moves on from deportivo we will get a third of his transfer fee. I am sorry but if you cannot nail down a place at blackpool or swansea then you… Read more »
Bit of a shame to see him go after the initial promise he was showing but this again feels like a move that will benefit all parties involved. Adding the sell-on clause feels like a good bit of business on our end of things also.
All the best to you, Charlie!