Arsenal: Calum Chambers Loan The Beginning Of Something Great

It may seem like the beginning of the end for Chambers’ Arsenal career, given his Boro loan, but it is more like the beginning of something great.

Calum Chambers will be spending his third season at Arsenal with Middlesbrough on a season long loan. While the young Englishman was sent out as a starter on match day one against Liverpool, he has proven to be woefully inadequate of being a Premier League defender.

He was kept on the books until Shkodran Mustafi was brought in, but now this Boro loan seems set in stone. The North Yorkshire club may even seek to keep Chambers on a permanent basis if he fits in.

It’s hard not to think that this could be the beginning of the end for someone that Wenger thought so highly of. Chambers cost Arsenal £16m back in 2014, a massive price for a defensive prospect, but Wenger didn’t stop to ask questions. He paid it.

Entering his third season, it’s clear that he did has not progressed as we may have liked.

Although it seems like the arrival of 24 year old Mustafi sealed the fate of Chambers, it was moreso the arrival of Chambers’ English counterpart, Rob Holding, that did so. Chambers was not supposed to take this long to be ready, so when a younger, more ready and just as English Holding stepped into the role and showed intelligence and composure, it was Chambers that suffered.

Holding was what Chambers was supposed to be. And it was actually kind of shocking. When we stop for a minute to consider that Holding was only £2.5m and Chambers nearly eight times that, we are again reminded that price tags really do not matter.

And yet, even with all these prevailing factors that go into Chambers being stumped, this is far from the beginning of the end of his Arsenal career. Instead, I would call it the beginning of something great.

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Chambers has all the raw talent you could ask for. When he is able to focus in and truly work his craft, he is fantastic. I always cite this example, but Chambers was brought on against Leicester City last season when Koscielny had an early departure and the young Englishman stoned both Riyad Mahrez and Jamie Vardy in 1v1 situations.

It’s just his focus that is the problem. Sometimes he makes a terrible pass or puts himself in a poor position given his lack of pace.

That is a byproduct of experience. While we would love to see him progressing, the simple fact of the matter is that without actual game time to learn these things the hard way, he never will. Arsenal now has Mustafi and Holding ahead of Chambers. It would have been another wasted year.

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Going to Boro, Chambers will have the chances he would not have had in North London. If, in this year at Boro, he figures it out and improves, Arsenal will have room for him (Mertesacker is moving on, Koscielny is getting older). If not, he won’t be left in the dark anymore. Either way, this loan is great for young Chambers.

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