The Gunners were on the hunt for a creative midfielder in the summer which they eventually achieved by signing Martin Odegaard.
Despite the signing of the Norwegian, the squad still lacks creativity from a deeper area in midfield which is a gap that needs to be plugged. Arsenal fans were given a reminder of Bernardo Silva who could fit the bill perfectly after he spoke with praise for the current boss Mikel Arteta.
In an interview with football daily, Silva said: "I speak for myself, and I think I speak for the group. When he left people were sad because he was someone we really liked working with.
He offers a lot, even though he was not the first [team] manager he acted like he was a little bit in terms of helping and how present he was.”
Bernardo Silva was heavily linked with a move to the Gunners in the summer transfer window after it emerged that he wanted to leave the club, however, a deal never managed to materialise.
According to reports, the Portuguese international had preferred a move back to Spain. Despite this, the Gunners missed a great opportunity to sign the midfielder before his transfer to Manchester City.
At the end of the 2016/2017 season, Arsenal had serious contract issues to sort out with star players Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez.
Ozil would eventually agree to a major bumper contract in January 2018.
Despite showing performances of a high level, Ozil’s consistency was not the greatest and it seemed like a desperate attempt to offer him such a rise in wages to keep him at the club.
During the same time, Bernardo Silva had just finished a magnificent season with AS Monaco and was a major factor in the side reaching the Champions League semi-finals and being crowned champions of Ligue 1.
It would have been hard for the Gunners to persuade Silva to join the north London club instead of Pep Guardiola’s trophy-less Man City project at the time but if Ozil was sold that summer they would have stood more of a chance.
Instead, the Ozil contract only led to negativity with constant fallouts with managers and absences from matches, leaving fans to wonder what if the contract situation was treated differently.
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