Once tipped as a potential future star Charlie Patino has left Arsenal to join Spanish second division club Deportivo de La Coruña.
The midfielder had been at Arsenal since he was 11 years old, and scored on his debut for the first team when he came off the bench in an EFL Cup tie against Sunderland.
He was featured in a British newspaper as one of the best young players in academy systems in the country, but loan spells with Blackpool and Swansea City did not go as planned, and he barely featured for the Welsh club in the second half of last season.
Significantly when Arsenal needed youngsters to supplement their numbers for their US tour this summer, with senior players still resting from their Euro and Copa América involvement, Patino was not one of them.
It illustrates again the difficulty of making the bridge from youth to first-team football, and that a player like Bukayo Saka is very much the exception and not the rule.
Whilst a sum of ₤1 million for a player once rated so highly may seem derisory, Arsenal have protected themselves by inserting a substantial sell-on clause into the contract.
