Why Arsenal and Liverpool may regret not signing Coutinho

Stefan Bienkowski

• Updated: 7 Jan 2022 09:51 GMT
• 7 min read

Aston Villa have completed the signing of Barcelona midfielder Phillipe Coutinho on an initial six-month loan deal, with an option to make the move permanent in the summer.

While Barca fans will likely be thanking the heavens for the club’s ability to finally offload the Brazil international, Villa fans will also have every right to welcome the signing as some form of divine intervention.

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Indeed, while Coutinho’s stock may not be quite what it was, the attacking midfielder is still an exceptional player. And there’s little doubt that Villa have managed to pick up a player that Liverpool and Arsenal were foolish to overlook in the January window.

Coutinho’s demise has been exaggerated

Reading some of the reports in Spain of Coutinho’s current situation in Barcelona, one would assume the player had put on a huge amount of weight or had a serious injury that made him unplayable. In truth, the Brazilian midfielder is still a very good player.

Rather than struggle to perform for Barca last season, Coutinho was simply overlooked entirely by Ronald Koeman and was only afforded 792 minutes of football across the entire season to prove himself. And he still managed three goals and two assists in that short period of time.

Indeed, it’s easy to forget that it was only 18 months ago that the attacking midfielder was coming off a treble-winning season at Bayern Munich after scoring 11 goals and nine assists for the Bundesliga side.

In truth, Coutinho’s banishment at Barca is more down to his inability to live up to the extraordinary amount of money they spent on him and the politics that followed. But there’s still a perfectly good player there.

He has valuable Premier League experience

It may be hard to imagine now, but once upon a time Coutinho did play in the Premier League and he was exceptionally good at what he did.

Over the course of 152 league games for Liverpool, the attacking midfielder bagged an impressive 41 goals and 38 assists.

When we break that down to an average per 90 minutes, it works out at a remarkable 0.62 goals or assists per game.

Even if Coutinho can only average half that amount at Villa, he’d still end up being a tremendous asset to Gerrard’s side. Which is exactly why Arsenal and Liverpool should have taken a chance on the Brazil international.