By Opta Analyst | Created at 2025-01-16 15:05:14 | Updated at 2025-01-16 19:07:20
4 hours ago
Donyell Malen has signed for Aston Villa in time to potentially make his debut at the home of former club Arsenal this weekend. Will the Dutch forward prove a shrewd signing for the Premier League club?
This weekend could see Donyell Malen finally make his competitive first-team debut at the Emirates Stadium. It’s been a long time coming for the Dutch forward, having worked his way through Arsenal’s academy joining from Ajax in 2015.
But he won’t be playing for the Gunners. Instead, he could line up for their opponents, Aston Villa, who signed Malen this week from Borussia Dortmund for a fee in the region of €25 million.
Malen is one of many former Arsenal academy stars who have gone on to build an impressive career across Europe before eventually working their way back to the Premier League.
His two years in Arsenal’s academy saw him feature alongside a list of players now plying their trade across Europe’s top five leagues. Emile Smith-Rowe, Eddie Nketiah, Reiss Nelson, Nathan Tella, Joe Willock, Ismaël Bennacer and Stephy Mavididi are among those, and all of them have now departed Arsenal for regular first-team action.
Now, with 175 top-flight league appearances under his belt across spells at PSV in the Eredivisie and Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga, Malen is set to finally make his Premier League bow.
Despite spending three and a half seasons in Germany at BVB, there is an overriding sense that Malen could have achieved more in his time at the club. While his 15 goals in all competitions last season made him Dortmund’s joint top goalscorer alongside Niclas Füllkrug, those goals came across 38 appearances. Dortmund ended the season without a trophy in all three of Malen’s full seasons at the club, and the forward may ultimately be remembered as one of the game’s ‘nearly men.’
The 2022-23 Bundesliga season saw Dortmund snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, losing the title on the final day to Bayern Munich. It was the second consecutive season they had finished second in the German top flight.
Last season, they also ended as runners-up in the UEFA Champions League, albeit as outsiders against powerhouses Real Madrid in the final.
Malen was signed by Dortmund as a replacement for the outgoing Jadon Sancho in the summer of 2021. It was always going to be a big task to live up to the numbers that Sancho posted during his first spell with BVB, and as feared, he fell short.
Across his time at the German club, Malen was involved in 39 goals in 94 Bundesliga appearances (30 goals, 9 assists), less than half of Sancho’s output in his first spell at the club (83 goal involvements – 38 goals, 45 assists).
While Malen struggled to match Sancho’s numbers, his time in the Bundesliga was far from a failure. His 30 non-penalty goals between August 2021 and his final appearance on 10 January 2025 were bettered by only six players in the competition, while he made the most of the chances presented to him overall. He outperformed his expected goals (xG) total by nearly four goals (26.3 xG).
However, his chance creation numbers were largely underwhelming. In 5,810 minutes across his Bundesliga career, Malen averaged 1.1 chances created per game, dropping slightly to 1.0 when considering only open-play chances.
That open-play average was well below players like Thomas Müller (2.6), Florian Wirtz (2.5) and Jamal Musiala (2.0) over that same period.
Malen averaged just 0.17 expected assists (xA) per 90 across his Dortmund career, ranking outside the top 50 players in that metric among those to have played at least 3,500 minutes.
While limited playing time in 2024-25 (610 minutes) has affected his recent output, creating only one chance for a teammate this campaign, as a forward, raises concerns about his impact.
Malen does offer positional versatility for Villa. During his time at BVB, the Dutchman played across all three positions in the front line.
Used more on the left side, tasked with cutting inside onto his right foot, or as a central forward by Marco Rose in his first season in Dortmund, Malen was gradually used more often on the right by Edin Terzić in 2022-23 and 2023-24 before Nuri Şahin used him in mainly the same way, albeit more frequently as a substitute.
From wide positions, Malen poses a threat with his ball-carrying ability. Between his first and last Bundesliga appearance, he attempted 76 shots following a ball carry, a tally exceeded only by Omar Marmoush (84) and Leroy Sané (80), while he also featured inside the top 10 players for take-ons (320).
He only beat an opponent with 43.8% of those take-ons, however, below the averages of consistent dribblers like Musiala (52.2%), Sané (51.3%), Wirtz (52.6%), Alphonso Davies (52.6%) and Jeremie Frimpong (46.1%).
Dortmund signed Malen from PSV in July 2021 after a brilliant season in the Dutch top flight. Although PSV finished second to Ajax, Malen’s 19 goals and eight assists saw him involved in 27 goals in 32 appearances – the third-best tally in the league that season. However, while the step up from the Eredivisie to the Bundesliga was significant, the jump to the Premier League will be even greater.
The signing of Malen does give Villa another good attacking option. If viewed as a replacement for the outgoing Jaden Philogene, who has now signed for Ipswich after only rejoining Villa in the summer, then it looks like an upgrade for Unai Emery’s squad, albeit with Philogene still a bit of an unknown quantity at this level.
Leon Bailey has also struggled to reach anywhere near the levels he hit last season, in which he scored 10 goals and assisted a further nine in 35 Premier League appearances.
Malen also comes with a great deal of experience. He’s made 31 appearances in the Champions League, including a 10-minute substitute cameo in last season’s final defeat to Real Madrid. That ‘big game’ experience will come in handy if Aston Villa can navigate into the latter stages of the competition. Malen also has 41 international caps to his name for the Netherlands, and was a key member of the side that reached the Euro 2024 semi-finals last summer, scoring twice in their last-16 victory over Romania.
With Villa currently hovering outside the top six and in danger of failing to qualify for European competition next season, a positive result at Arsenal this weekend would be most welcome. Should Malen make his long-awaited Premier League debut in the game, there’s a lot of people he’d like to prove wrong nearly eight years after his exit from the north London club.
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