Arsenal: Mathieu Debuchy promise should never become hindrance

Arsenal welcomed back Calum Chambers, but saw fit to shove him out wide in favor of Mathieu Debuchy, which seems terrible backwards.

There was no one I was more excited to have back at Arsenal than Calum Chambers. He is such a talented defender with supreme instincts and budding talents. His wherewithal as a central defender was finally going to be given another chance against FC Koln.

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Only it wasn’t. Seeing as how Mathieu Debuchy has been doing quite well as a central defender, he was given priority and Chambers was pushed outside, which in turn relegated Reiss Nelson to the bench.

It’s a tough situation to assess, but there is one thing we certainly do know, and that’s that Chambers and Nelson are both being robbed of game time in a match that wasn’t all that important, in favor of a 32 year old rightback who we know wants to leave.

Here’s the thing – I think it’s great that Debuchy is back and playing well. I really do. He fell into a piss-poor situation at Arsenal with his initial injury. But if you want to talk about what these matches are used for, it’s not to give Debuchy a new lease on life.

I’m sorry, but he’s 32 years old and is not long for this club. Then you have Calum Chambers, who is valued at over £20m and has the defensive instincts of a sentinel, and he is being forced out wide, into a position that, yes, he has played before (although as a fullback, not a wingback). That isn’t okay. Loyalty is cool and all, we definitely have to have it, but priorities, right?

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And then it pushes Nelson to the bench. Which is so counter-intuitive it makes my head spin. Yes, it’s nice to have veteran presence, and Debuchy provides that. But so does Giroud, Mertesacker, Elneny, Coquelin, Wilshere. So why do you need Debuchy out there?

Reiss Nelson could instead have been playing with the U23s, who he hasn’t been playing with since he’s been called to the midweek senior fixtures. The point is game time, is it not?

At the end of the day, there was no harm done. We still went through. But It just didn’t make a whole lot of sense yet again. And it didn’t look like a situation we should have been in at all.

Next: Arsenal vs FC Koln Player Ratings

I don’t want this to sound terrible, because I’m not rooting against Debuchy, but hopefully this less-than-stellar performance will convince Wenger to put people where they belong.