Arsenal are set to travel to PSV Eindhoven next week to face the Dutch side in the Champions League, to decide who will advance to the quarter-final stage.
The two-legged affair will kick off at Philips Stadion on Tuesday 4 March, before finishing in north London the following week.
There’s already plenty for Arsenal to focus on, so they could perhaps do without the added storyline of a former forward making his return to the Emirates Stadium.
Ex-Arsenal man welcomed to PSV squad
The transfer window is long shut across Europe, but the Dutch side have managed to convince a free agent to join their ranks until the end of the season, outside of the regular transfer window rules.
The Boeren announced on Sunday (February 23) that former Gunners striker Lucas Perez was to join the club with immediate effect on a short-term contract.
Perez joined Arsenal in 2016 but found limited success, making just 21 appearances for the Gunners before leaving for fellow London-based side West Ham United in 2018, with a loan back to hometown club Deportivo La Coruna in between.
The news will immediately conjure up pangs of fear for those connected with Arsenal — rarely does an ex-player return with another side without somehow finding themselves on the scoresheet — but there will be no such concerns in this case.
Perez will be ineligible to face Arsenal in both legs, as he arrived after the deadline to resubmit squads to UEFA for the Champions League, but he will no doubt be in the stands, given the context.
Nevertheless, given the club forked out £17.1million for those 21 appearances, he’ll be an untimely reminder of some of the poor business deals Arsenal have done in the past, especially if they fail to progress past his new side.
In FourFourTwo’s opinion, Perez has never been the most lethal striker — hitting double figures in a single season just three times in his career, one of those being in the Spanish third tier last year — but he has found the net fairly consistently for every team he’s played for.
It’s for that reason that the Gunners will be glad to be avoiding him on the pitch, it’d be written in the stars for him to bag at least one otherwise.
Perez is valued at €500k, according to Transfermarkt. Before any thoughts of PSV for Arsenal, however, they have the not-inconsiderate task of defeating Nottingham Forest at the City Ground, when Premier League action returns this week.
