Former Gunner Stephy Mavididi made it into double figures for goals plus assists in Ligue 1 on Sunday, scoring an impressive brace for Montpellier.
Playing against AS Monaco at the weekend, Stephy Mavididi scored twice to earn his team three points. The goals were his seventh and eighth of the campaign, on top of his three assists in Ligue 1 this season.
They were very good goals as well. Drifting in from the left, Mavididi gave Montpellier a 2-0 lead just after the half-hour mark with a powerful finish from outside the area. You can watch it here.
The ex-Arsenal academy striker saw his team concede the lead to slip back to 2-2, but he crashed another strong effort in off the bar for an injury-time winner. You can watch that goal here.
The goals are very much reminiscent of Mavididi at his best with the Arsenal u23s, which is an encouraging sign.
The jump to senior football is always a tough one, and it’s taken the forward a few years to get to this point, but he’s finally looking like a difference-maker in a top-five league.
Mavididi generally plays out on the left nowadays, rather than as a centre-forward, so to reach 11 goal contributions before February is a very solid return.
Perhaps it should be no surprise the 23-year-old has recently been linked with a move back to the Premier League.
Mavididi never quite broke through in North London, scoring bags of goals for the u23s but only making the bench for a couple of first-team games.
It was perhaps a little surprising to see Juventus coming in for him under those circumstances, and it was a similar story in Italy.
The forward was a regular for Juve’s B-team, but he only made a single appearance for the senior side.
Rarely selected for either club, Mavididi’s started to make a career for himself in France instead.
At first, Mavididi moved to Dijon on loan with an option to buy. But he fell out with the club hierarchy while he was there, and they decided not to activate the option.
That turned out to be good news for Arsenal, who were entitled to a cut of his transfer. He was eventually sold for a higher fee (€6.3m) to Montpellier.
It looks like that move was good news for the French club too.