Transfer Rumor: Arsenal planning £45m move for Malcom as Alexis Sanchez replacement

The Times are reporting that Arsenal plan to meet the agent of 20 year old Brazilian winger Malcom to persuade him to come to North London.

With Alexis Sánchez all but formally a Manchester City player getting a replacement for the Chilean is a top priority, and the Times report that if Malcom comes in, Alexis would be allowed to leave in January.

The rumored price tag is in the range of £45 million which actually seems to be fair given the crazy valuations that fly around when a Premier League team is involved.

Looking at the statistics he has very good numbers for a 20 year old in a top flight league.

The areas of concern for me in the stats would be in the shot volume, Arsenal are replacing one of their few players that can create their own shot and a player who takes a large portion of the teams total shots and Malcom would need to up that to fill the gap.

The second concern is that the shots he does take are not of the greatest quality.

A lot of his shots are from outside the box with just a few coming from inside the danger zone and none from inside the six yard box. Part of this could be that Bordeaux are not a very good team (just above the relegation zone in Ligue 1) and his teammates don’t help get him into better shooting locations.

Mohamed Mohamed who watches a lot more French football than I do had a very good article on Statsbomb scouting him. Here is the conclusion:

Malcom has been a productive wide player, and there are certain things he can do that get you excited about his potential. He is incredibly quick and at best can leverage his gravity as a threat into finding teammates with dangerous passes. He also probably needs to be coached even harder about the value of shooting in better areas, and being more efficient as a player. While not the absolute top tier prospect that Ligue 1 has seen over the past few years, he’s in the discussion at the next level, and is definitely one of the more intriguing ones.

Sounds intriguing to me, and a rumor to keep an eye on.