Wednesday truly was a night to forget for Arsenal.
Mikel Arteta's side went into their Champions League Round of 16 tie against Porto as heavy favourites thanks to their impressive Premier League form.
However, they found themselves leaving empty-handed at full-time thanks to a 94th-minute wonder strike from Wenderson Galendo.
The Gunners looked toothless in attack, with Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli practically anonymous for the 90 minutes.
It was a game that was crying out for some invention and flair, which is exactly what they could've got from a player they walked away from twice in the past.
Arsenal missed out on a world-beater in 2017
When you ask the majority of fans who the best player in the world is at the moment, there's a pretty good chance that Kylian Mbappé will make it into their top three – if he isn't already their number one – and Arsenal had the chance to sign him in 2017.
Back in 2020, Sky Sports revealed that, along with a number of other high-profile players, Arsenal had a genuine chance of signing the French prodigy before he moved to Paris Saint-Germain.
Mbappé has even said as much, describing a meeting that he had with then-Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger that summer: "I met with Arsène Wenger, who is a great coach. He has a great reputation here in France, he's well-respected and knows how to develop young players. This was a real option for me."
There was one fairly obvious stumbling block: the price, which was a cool £168m.
Now, Arsenal were not a particularly free-spending club at the time – Mesut Ozil was still their record signing – but there was obviously something in the air that window, as while they considered the Mbappé fee too expensive, they signed Alexandre Lacazette for a record fee of £46.5m and even more bizarrely, made a £92m offer to AS Monaco for Thomas Lemar – what was going on?
While it's understandable that the Gunners pulled out of the deal to sign the World Cup winner in 2017 over the price, what's worse is that according to Spanish journalist Guillem Balague (via Sports Illustrated), Arsenal had an opportunity to sign him for a lot less just two years prior:
"At 17 there were a lot of teams interested in him – one of those was Arsenal. But his family and the agents asked for £7m. For a 17-year-old, Arsenal decided not to continue the conversation because there's always a risk."
So, in essence, the north Londoners had two opportunities to sign a player that CIES Football Observatory now values at €200m – £171m – for a tenth of Nicolas Pepe's transfer fee.
How Kylian Mbappé compares to Gabriel Martinelli
Yes, this is quite an absurd comparison, but let's just live in a fantasy world for a second. After all, if the Gunners had signed the 25-year-old goal machine, his tendency to play on the left would put him in competition with Martinelli.
So, this season alone, the "generational" talent, as described by talent scout Jacek Kulig, has scored 32 goals and provided seven assists in just 31 games for PSG, meaning he is averaging 1.2 goal involvements per match.
In comparison, Arsenal's dazzling Brazilian has seven goals and three assists in his 30 games, which is an average of 0.33 goal involvements per match – although he did average 0.45 last year.
In short, there really isn't much of a comparison between the pair, which is no slight on the Arsenal man but just a testament to how unreal the Real-bound superstar is.
At the end of the day, all teams have that one player who they just missed out on, and while they usually aren't as good as Mbappé – 399 goal involvements in 356 career appearances – the Gunners still have a talented crop of youngsters who look set to lead them into a bright future.
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That said, just imagine that Saka and Mbappé link up.
