Amid Arsenal’s pursuit of midfield reinforcements, one wonders whether there’s an alternate reality in which the Gunners steered heir deadline day business towards pulling out all the stops to sign Ousmane Dembele from Barcelona.
The France international has been linked with a Premier League switch in recent days, with Dembele’s former Borussia Dortmund team-mate Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang sparking suggestions of a move to north London with his activity on social media.
While injuries have harmed Dembele's progress at the Camp Nou, we should not forget how exciting a player he once was. Barcelona paid £97million for him in 2017. He was to be Neymar's long-term successor out on the wings in Catalonia.
Summer deadline day 2020 should have represented a chance for potential suitors to rescue the 23-year-old from his struggles and get a career back on track that at one time looked as exciting and destined for greatness as Jadon Sancho's own trajectory appears today.
Back in 2018, when Aubameyang was a few months into his Arsenal career, we saw the first murmurs about the Gunners looking to sign Dembele and reignite the relationship with Aubameyang which had worked so well in Germany.
In Dembele’s sole campaign in Germany, he registered 18 assists in less than 3,000 minutes of Bundesliga and Champions League action, playing his part in helping Aubameyang end the season with a career-best 40 goals.
Since then, he has embarked on regular trips to London, and remains on good terms with his former team-mate, prompting hope from many of an Arsenal persuasion that the pair might be able to rekindle their partnership at the Emirates.
The excitement from Arsenal fans in 2018 was palpable, perhaps more so than in recent years when the Gunners have been successful in completing big-money moves for other talents.
Even if Dembele is not so much of a sure thing these days, there’s something romantic about bringing together two players whose partnership produced genuinely wonderful football.
There’s one goal in particular which serves as a reminder of the understanding between the duo.
It ended up being the only strike of the game as Dortmund beat RB Leipzig at Signal Iduna Park, and saw Dembele leave Marvin Compper and Willi Orban eating dust as he zipped down the right wing before placing a perfect cross onto Aumabeyang’s head.
It’s the kind of goal you can’t watch only once, and it will have been replayed in Arsenal fans’ minds for weeks on ends when the link first emerged.
Arsenal could have pointed to earlier occasions where they were able to invite a player to link up with a team-mate with whom he’d enjoyed previous success.
Robert Pires linking up with France colleague Thierry Henry is the most obvious example, while the relationship between former Malaga teammates Nacho Monreal and Santi Cazorla helped put a smile on plenty of supporters’ faces even at a time when things weren’t going swimmingly on the pitch.
It may have been the case that Arsenal had more pressing concerns than adding another exciting attacking talent to their ranks, once considered one of the world’s best prospects, to a forward line that has failed to score in just four of 33 games in 2020.
Occasionally the sheer force of a narrative and the concept of ‘getting the gang back together’ can sometimes trump logic, and besides, it’s worth remembering that Dembele is still just 23.
It might have been a risk - adding a player whose sell-by date may have already passed at the very top level rather than one with time on his side to recapture a personal history with chapters dedicated to the spectacular - but those old dreams of Arsenal fans still remain an alluring fantasy most football supporters wouldn't mind to see come true.
Seeing so much talent wasted is always heartbreak. Manchester United had tried to sign him on loan from Barcelona to keep a seat warm on the bench as cover for their other attackers while they waited to try and secure Sancho in 2021.
They are hardly a club where players bounce back anymore but it would have added more layers of dismay to see Dembele lining up under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
Maybe on some level a failure to move to Old Trafford on deadline day is a lucky escape for both the player and those who still long for the combination that used to bring joy to their counterparts at Dortmund. It certainly wasn't a move that said too much that was positive about the strategic detail on display in Manchester at present.
Fans looking back at their own tweets from back in 2018 to get a feel for just how much this move might have once meant to them can be forgiven for pondering what could have been in their own colours.
