The demise of ‘the best player to walk through the doors’ at Arsenal: How Charlie Patino went from scoring on his first-team debut to heading for the Emirates exit at just 20

It was a cold afternoon on September 28 last year when I went down to Swansea Football Club to meet Charlie Patino.

The diminutive midfielder was spread out on a chair in the club’s dressing room, ready for his only interview since leaving Arsenal on loan in August.

He was certainly lively. Three assists and a goal in eight games, seven of which were starts, had left the 20-year-old confident – and with his Gunners prospects in mind for next summer, citing William Saliba’s move from being on loan for three consecutive seasons to becoming an Arsenal mainstay.

“Saliba is a different player to me,” he said.

“He’s a centre-back, big, powerful, so for me it’s inspiring to see someone from Arsenal be able to go on loan, make a name for himself and come back and show his qualities at Arsenal because it’s a massive club .”

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Patino gave no hint of doubt over his future at a club he joined at the age of 11 when he spoke to me effusively about the advice given to him by the likes of Bukayo Saka and Emile Smith Rowe.

It makes his sudden departure all the more sensational that the 20-year-old had to move abroad at the end of the season.

With just one year left on his Arsenal contract, the exit door is certainly beckoning.

It is understood that Mikel Arteta did not speak to Patino before his loan spells, but wished him well as he walked past him at the club.

He had been ready to leave the Gunners at the end of 2022. Arsenal changed their mind and activated an option to extend his contract until 2025.

Patino was then earmarked to leave last summer – the hierarchy were happy to help him make a permanent move elsewhere in his search for regular first-team football – but then both parties decided to send him out on loan again, this time to Swansea, in one last shot at showing his potential to break into Arteta’s team.

The arrival of the highly-rated Ethan Nwaneri and fellow 17-year-old Myles Lewis-Skelly were the final notches in this plan.

Patino holds a Spanish passport through his father Jules, which would boost his hopes of a move to La Liga due to Brexit rules.

The career of a young player not going as originally planned is certainly not new. Although you see, it was never meant to be that way for a customer whose talents were once compared to Saka.

Indeed, Arsenal’s head of scouting Sean O’Connor described him as the ‘best player ever to walk through the doors of the Hale End’. A statement when the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Tony Adams and Jack Wilshere have trodden the same path.

Patino’s connection with the north London club’s supporter base was also on when the then 18-year-old made his Gunners debut against Sunderland in the Carabao Cup on 21 December 2021.

He scored in the 5-1 win and soon after the attacking midfielder was training with the first team and the fans even had a Patino song ready.

The path seemed to be there for him to break into Arteta’s formidable squad – if he could make an impact on loan.

Patino spent the 2022-23 season away at Blackpool, a spell in League One that was underwhelming, but he had time on his side. He was only a teenager.

That made the move to Swansea for the following campaign all the more important.

It started well. But then manager Michael Duff, who rated Patino highly and often started him, was fired in December after less than six months in charge.

Alan Sheehan took over as deputy manager for a month before Luke Williams took over as manager.

This is where Patino’s decline started. In the next 15 games, he didn’t make a single start, playing just 120 minutes across those games.

This, unsurprisingly, is said to have affected the midfielder’s confidence. It is believed that his physical stature was one of the problems in Williams’ eyes.

When in his company, Patino’s build is slight. An area that could be targeted by opponents to counter his impressive dribbling skills. Although he knew it and emphasized in the interview that it was an area he had worked on.

He said: ‘Physicality is one of the main aspects I want to improve.

‘I go in and do extra recovery, extra training to improve myself as a player. I think it’s important because if I want to go up and be a Premier League player, the games are much faster now and you have to be ready for one-on-one duels and games that happen all over the pitch. ‘

One aspect that struck me before I left Swansea was Patino mentioning the Arsenal fans.

He said those fans were still interacting with him on social media and tracking how he was doing on loan in the expectation that he would one day set off the terraces at the Emirates in the same way he did in December 2021.

One can only hope he finds his feet again and rekindles the excitement many had in a player who had so much promise when he first emerged on the big stage.