Arsenal: Jon Toral career neglect will never make sense

Arsenal appear ready to ship off Jon Toral to Hull City, which will make him one of the biggest questions that will probably never have an answer.

When Arsenal plucked Hector Bellerin from the depths of the Barcelona youth system, they got another player too. That player was Jon Toral and he was a creative midfielder who was big enough to play in deeper positions. Like Santi Cazorla, but without the shortness.

Toral made several appearances for Arsenal in the preseason but was never selected to the first team. So the only thing we ever had to judge him off of was his loans.

Which couldn’t have been much better. He started under Mark Warburton at Brentford, where he pumped out six goals in thirty appearances. If that wasn’t promising enough, he went on the next year to take home player of the year honors with Birmingham City, dazzling crowds with his play-making ability.

That is where it all should have started.

He had proven he could play in the English game and Arsenal were starting to struggle with the health of Cazorla. They needed an heir to the Spaniard’s throne, and who better than another Spaniard who had proven himself on two separate occasions in two separate set-ups?

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But Arsene Wenger disagreed and sent him off to Granada, where he was buried on the bottom-feeding La Liga side and wasted away until he was called up yet again by Mark Warburton, this time at Rangers. And while this loan wasn’t nearly as productive as previous ones, he still made his impact and came home a better player because of it.

Through it all, Toral held to his narrative of wanting to be an Arsenal player.

Now, SkySports is telling us that the 22 year old is off to join Hull City. And I’m sitting here, shaking my head, as I think about all the opportunities he never had. Not to mention the fact that as it stands, Arsenal’s midfield is pretty thin.

At the base of the midfield, they have massive openings for substitutes and in the attack, there is always room for impact subs that can do more than Theo Walcott.

We will never know what Toral could have been because for whatever reason, Wenger never saw fit to give him even the smallest inkling of a chance. Even in his preseason appearances, he looked solid enough to be handed at least a single opportunity.

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But apparently not. And Wenger will probably never elaborate on why he just didn’t like Toral.

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