Arsenal: Rob Holding, Calum Chambers objective going wildly unchecked

Arsenal’s defensive situation needs long term assessing, and Rob Holding and Calum Chambers provide that, but how can we be so certain?

Arsenal’s defense may have suffered some piss-poor individual mistakes against Manchester Untied, but aside from that, the back three has been remarkably solid. That said, they are also remarkably old and figure to hit even more rough patches ahead.

We already know that Per Mertesacker is retiring at the end of the year. Laurent Koscielny is 32 years old and, by my assessment, age has not been kind to him this year, as he has struggled with consistency, not to mention injuries.

We have also spent a good deal of time talking about Nacho Monreal‘s age and how he is losing pace rather quickly. The Spaniard will be 32 as well come summer time, and the Gunners will have just Shkodran Mustafi and two young Englishman to bank on, barring any sort of transfers.

There were a lot of objectives on Arsenal’s checklist this season, so it only makes sense that some might slip out of the realm of possibility. But one that has gone glaringly unchecked is discerning if Calum Chambers and Rob Holding are defensive solutions or just fringe players with some potential.

This was down the lengthy to-do list, but the importance comes to the forefront when you consider the age and long-term prospects of the current defensive set up.

For me, I was looking forward to seeing a budding partnership between the two Englishmen. If not in the secondary competitions, then perhaps during the tight holiday period ahead. However, due to injuries and whatever you want to call the Mohamed Elneny experiment, we are now entering that holiday period without any more of a grasp on what their long-term prospects are then when we started the season.

It’s not like there is a time limit on this or anything, but part of why I’m even bringing this up is because of Laurent Koscielny’s being in the starting XI against Huddersfield, knowing what was coming and knowing that he had an Archilles problem.

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To me, that shows a lack of faith in Holding and Chambers, neither of whom have even been included in the squad regularly. There is obviously still a high valuation of Chambers given the reported asking price over the summer, but until we see it on the pitch, then we’re playing a dicey game.

Sol Campbell recently said that Arsenal are two defenders short of being a top team. With a back three, it’s hard to argue with that. You really need six to seven reliable defenders to man that back three. Realistically, all six to seven aren’t going to be world class, but three should be, with the other three to four being potentially world class or, at the very least, solid.

The fact that we’ve had to utilize midfielders and Mathieu Debuchy (as good as he’s been) in the center of defense should be all that needs to be said about that. I think Campbell has actually been generous with just saying two. Going forward beyond this year, there are so many questions that could be answered by simply getting a better read on our two young Englishmen.

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There’s time. Plenty of it. But if we reach the end of the year without having gained any better indication of their progress, I would have to call that a bit of a failure. Oh, and by the way, Chambers isn’t a wingback, nor will he ever be.

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