There's a lot to be read into the fact that Arsene Wenger rejected loan offers for Yaya Sanogo from clubs in Ligue 1 in favour of Crystal Palace. He wanted the young Frenchman to play more in the Premier League because he's clearly a player the manager has a lot of faith in.
Sanogo has unfairly become a figure of fun to some Arsenal fans, who point out he's scored just once in his career in north London. When you put it in such stark terms, it sounds bad, but he's made only 20 appearances, and 11 came as a substitute.
He's still a very inexperienced player because injury problems at his former club Auxerre and with Arsenal have hampered his development. This season he's had to try to find a place in the team ahead of more experienced and better players like Olivier Giroud, Danny Welbeck and Alexis Sanchez.
All the same, it's too early to dismiss him as not good enough, and perhaps the time spent at Selhurst Park on the pitch will enable him to develop as a player. It doesn't appear to be one of those loans that is simply a way of getting a player who isn't good enough, or wants to leave, out of the way.
If he looks clumsy and uncoordinated at times, it's more because he rarely gets to play regularly than any physical deficiency. He's strong, good in the air, relatively quick and often gets himself into good goal-scoring positions. His finishing and the confidence to put those chances away is something that has to be worked on but with regular football that should improve.
What gives us a clue as to Wenger's belief in the player are the games he's started for Arsenal. Last season he was handed a start against Bayern Munich in the Champions League. The week after the Gunners had been battered 5-1 by Liverpool at Anfield the two teams met again in the FA Cup 5th round -- Sanogo was selected ahead of Giroud in a game Arsenal had to win.
He started in the quarterfinal against Everton, as well as the semifinal at Wembley when Wenger's team reached the final on penalties. Make no mistake, the importance of the FA Cup was immense to both Wenger as an individual and to Arsenal as a club, yet the Frenchman had no compunction in starting the striker in games he had to win.
Even in the final, trailing 2-1 to Hull, it was the introduction of Sanogo for Lukas Podolski that changed a rather static Arsenal side into one that started causing the opposition lots of problems.
Full disclosure: it had more to do with Sanogo discombobulating Hull with his hard work and physical presence than anything he did with the ball, but it had a big impact all the same. That his one Arsenal goal came against Dortmund in the Champions League also means it can't be dismissed as it might have been against a mid-lower table team.
So, while it's still too early to dismiss Sanogo as a busted flush, it's also too early at this stage of his career to say he's going to turn into the next Emmanuel Adebayor or anything like that. What we do know is that Wenger usually has a good eye for a striker and he clearly sees something in the young man that most of us can't yet.
The next six months at Crystal Palace should give us more insight into him as a player and thus his Arsenal future.