Arsenal: Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain ‘comfort zone’ coming to the fore

When he signed for Liverpool, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain stated that he needed to get out of the Arsenal ‘comfort zone’. Such comments are now coming to the fore, damning Arsene Wenger his labouring management.

It’s fair to say that Arsenal are regressing. It would be naive to suggest anything but. And at the centre of it all is not the lack of investment, although that is a factor. It is not the lacking of quality personnel. It is not even the attitude of the players, despite that also being a detriment to the success of the side. The key issue of this football team stems from the inability to develop talent.

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By that, I mean to improve players that are in the squad. How many players are actually better now than they were last season or the season before or even the season before that? Not many, is the answer.

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And Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s comments as he cemented his transfer to Liverpool in the summer window perhaps suggest why. Speaking with Sky Sports after the window had passed, in an extended interview that is extremely interesting, Chamberlain stated that he felt that he needed to push himself out of his comfort zone:

"“I’m 24 now and some may say it’s still young but in football years, when you’ve been in a team for six years, it seems like you are quite old. I just felt like I really wanted to push on with my career and it felt like now was the right time to take myself out of my comfort zone, push myself and go and see what I can really achieve with a team like Liverpool.”"

With such a statement, Chamberlain implies that his career was better served by leaving Arsenal and joining Liverpool. ‘to push on with my career’. He felt that Jurgen Klopp was the manager who could tune him, prune his abilities, develop him as a player and push him further. That is a damning indictment of Arsene Wenger.

Rewind a decade and there would be few managers considered a greater developer of young players than Wenger. It was why Arsenal were always able to attract some of the best young talents from around the world. They wanted to work with Wenger. Now, the very opposite true; Chamberlain wanted to leave precisely because of the presence of Wenger.

The slipping into mediocrity has come from the comfort-zone mentality that many of these players have enjoyed, which has slowed their development to a standstill. In terms of natural talent, Arsenal’s squad is excellent: Hector Bellerin, Alex Iwobi, Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, Shkodran Mustafi. Their pure, unadulterated ability is astounding, but it has been diluted and infected by Wenger.

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That is a problem. This is something that Wenger prides his management on, and it is now actually decimating the team. That is strong a sign as any that the time has come for him to depart.