Arsenal: Rob Holding exposes transfer hysteria shame

The summer transfer window is on its way and with it will come a host of wild rumours. Here is why Arsenal’s Rob Holding can put it to shame.

It is the natural prerogative of a football fan to be overly optimistic regarding the fortunes of their beloved club. I even thought that Arsenal could have won the league this season!! How wrong I was. Such premonitions and ambition tend to hit overdrive when the transfer window comes around, especially for clubs with the ability to invest heavily.

The Gunners are most certainly one of those clubs. While one of the most prominent vices regarding Arsene Wenger has been his hesitancy to spend in the transfer window, since the 2013 summer, he has signed Mesut Ozil for £42 million, Alexis Sanchez for £35 million and spent the best part of £100 million this past summer.

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Arsenal are a club that are often at the centre of the encircling, maddening transfer rumour mill, unable to escape from conjecture and theory, synonymous with words ‘reportedly’ and ‘allegedly’. They will, invariably, be linked to possible moves for a whole host of players, most of which will be ambitious or simply fake reporting.

But fans, in their ever-optimistic state, gobble it up like pancakes for breakfast, stewing over the day’s rumours with their morning coffee, envisaging the wonders of their soon to be title-winning team with shiny, new attackers. So when teams do not sign the players that many dream of, disappointment and despair is the prevalent feeling of the fan base.

The prime example has come already this season. Arsenal are being relentlessly linked with a move for Southampton’s Virgil van Dijk. Now, I am not here to say that such reports have been fabricated, or even exaggerated on. Rather, it would be a very uncharacteristic move for Wenger. Rarely does he pursue an established Premier League star, usually preferring to look abroad for where he feels he can get better value.

Moreover, given the presence of Rob Holding in the squad, a young and talented defender who has a bright future ahead of him, it would be even more surprising to see Wenger crowd out his development by bringing another player into the mix.

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But that is the state of modern football. Transfer rumours rule the media roost, fans become hopeful of the groundshaking additions their teams will make, and players like Holding get overlooked. Well, the time is now for the youngster to defy the fans’ hopes and dreams, and expose the transfer hysteria shame.

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