While other clubs slum it out in the transfer market, you get to sit back smugly knowing that the expensive solution to all your problems is already on your doorstep.
With the season nearly half gone, Premier League clubs will have already extensively planned for the summer, and monitoring the progress of players out on loan is a key part of that.
Manchester City have a huge decision about what to do with James McAtee, lovingly reared from the youth academy, while some of their rivals face similar scenarios.
William Saliba and Destiny Udogie are proof of the merits of going out on loan to mature as they are now among Arsenal and Tottenham’s top performers.
Who does your club have out on loan who could be the next big thing?
For some outfits there is an answer to set pulses racing. For others, the prospects are more murk
Charlie Patino, 20, has spent the last couple of years on loan in the Championship and is currently at Swansea, where he has three goals and four assists in 16 games.
The midfielder is hardly a stranger to Gunners fans, having scored on his debut in a 5-1 win over Sunderland in December 2021.
Former Arsenal scout Brian Stapleton, who once spotted a certain Jack Wilshere, said Patino was the best youngster ever to come through the club’s Hale End academy.
‘His first touch was unbelievable, his vision, his awareness of space,’ he said after seeing him aged 11, playing for an under 13s team. ‘He was way above his years, he was on another planet to anyone else on the pitch.’
Speaking exclusively with Mail Sport in October, Patino explained how seeing William Saliba go out on loan and come back to a prominent first-team place was ‘inspiring’.
With Blackpool and Swansea, Patino has been with sides at the weaker end of the Championship scale. He was part of Blackpool’s relegated squad last season and Swansea sit 18th.
While their styles might not match Arsenal, he has done his best to stand out and the youngster who grew up in London Colney, not far from the club’s training centre, has big dreams.
Seeing fellow academy graduates such as Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith-Rowe, and Eddie Nketiah break into the team has offered him the glimmer of light he needs
