Arsenal: The seeping away of the British core

Arsenal’s British core has all but seeped away, with no player in the squad as England faced Germany on Friday night. What went wrong?

As England prepared to face Germany in an international friendly on Friday as a part of the build-up to next summer’s World Cup, Gareth Southgate was keen to highlights the influx of youth. The average age of the starting XI, for example, was 24.5 years old. But there was another aspect of the team and the squad that, from an Arsenal perspective, was equally as interesting.

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There was not one Arsenal player in the England squad. Perhaps there should have been, in Jack Wilshere, and there would have been if Danny Welbeck had been fit. But the fact of the matter is simple: Arsene Wenger’s squad did not provide one England player.

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And that raises questions of the development of the make-up of his squad. It wasn’t all that long ago that Wenger was heralding the young British core that ran through the spine of the team, a core that he was intending to build his squad around and found his team upon. How such hopes have been scuppered.

Of that British core, Kieran Gibbs, Carl Jenkinson and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain are no longer with the team, Jack Wilshere and Danny Welbeck have been unable to fight off incessant injury issues, and Calum Chambers is yet to establish himself fully in the first team. Their careers have seeped away; their influence and their standing have diminished.

Wenger, somewhat ironically given the general make-up of his squad throughout his time at the Emirates, hailed the importance of having British players in the side. He sees their character, their fight and their comfort with the English game as vital traits for a squad to have.

But Arsenal, in a comically painful fashion, have lacked those exact characteristics. They are soft, they do not battle. They are not resilient. They are brittle. They break and crumble under the pressure.

There are many reasons for these many failures. Rarely is football such a simple game. But one of the key ones is the lack of progression of the British core. That is not necessarily the fault of the individual players. It’s not exactly fair to apportion responsibility for Wilshere’s failures because of injuries, for example. But, nonetheless, their development has not progressed as expected or hoped for.

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And Friday’s game was simply a signpost shedding further light on that fact. The British core has seeped away, and it is very, very sad indeed.