Arsenal: How much do you invest in Rob Holding this summer?

Arsenal’s defense needs help, but keep in mind that we will get Rob Holding back. So the question, then, is how much you invest in him.

All season long, we’ve been talking about finding long-term, permanent solutions to Arsenal‘s woeful defense. At the start of the year, it was all about how Sokratis wasn’t the solution and now that Laurent Koscielny is back, and he’s clicking with Sokratis, it’s all about how the future is still bleak.

At the end of last year, we saw Konstantinos Mavropanos burst onto the scene, and he looked like a potential savior. Then Sokratis came out and said that Dinos was even better than he was, and the hype was rejuvenated.

Fast forward a whole eleven minutes played this season, and the excitement has fallen into a dull murmur. Because you can’t talk about what isn’t there.

As such, now we all want to know who the Gunners are going to sign in the summer. It’s a logical question. They do, after all, have to sign someone, surely they do. Matthijs De Ligt has been bantered about as the unrealistic choice, with Daniele Rugani also re-emerging as a potential fit.

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But the question we first have to ask is how much we are investing in Rob Holding. Don’t forget about him. Just when things were getting good, and he was proving to be a valuable commodity on that defense, he went down for the season.

Up until that point, there was optimism about the future, hope in something better. Just because he missed half a season doesn’t mean that all that hope just goes up in flames. He is still young, he is still talented, and when he comes back, he isn’t going to want to be blocked by a bunch of young, talented stalwarts.

Not when he is a young talented stalwart.

I’ll admit it, I’m guilty of looking past him at times just because he went down at literally the worst possible time. He was just building up momentum and consistency for the first time since touching down at the Emirates and right as he was about to make the next step, wham.

To answer the original question – a lot. You invest a lot in Holding to be able to carry this defense into the next era, because he has proven capable. Now all he needs to do is get back in there and get back to it.