Arsenal: There is more to Hector Bellerin stagnation

Hector Bellerin has been labelled as Arsene Wenger’s greatest failure. Here is why there is more to the Arsenal right back’s stagnation than just poor coaching, however.

Arsene Wenger. The man renowned for his acquisition and development of young players. Perhaps like no manager before him, Arsenal’s chief has mastered his tenure on the foundations of young, talent, and teaching. But as his time has increasingly turned to toil, so did his apparent wizardry with the young.

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The young upstarts surging into the line-up subsided for stagnating, levelling unfulfilled potential. Gone were the blistering risers; here are the tailing disappointments. Perhaps the best example of this is Hector Bellerin, a player who has only just turned 23 and is still waiting to reach the inordinate ability that he boasted a raw youngster.

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Here is a from a lovely piece on Football 365 on the apparent failed teaching and instruction of Wenger to Bellerin. In it, Matt Stead details his belief that while injuries, positional uncertainty and competition have scuppered the progress of other prospects under Wenger in the past, the same excuses cannot be made for Bellin and his plateauing. Here is an extract from that piece:

"“Bellerin was destined to be different. He had the physical gifts, the prodigious talents. Yet Wenger left it to nature instead of nurture. There is a reason Guardiola sought Bellerin so eagerly less than two years ago, and why Juventus are courting him now. It is the most damning indictment of Wenger that one of the world’s best young players has stagnated and plateaued under his management.”"

Now, it is a well-worked-out argument with some very valid points made. Certainly, Bellerin’s development has stagnated and that is concerning. But there are two caveats to be made in defence of Wenger’s apparent part in this stalling of progression, or lack of a part, if Stead is to be believed.

The first is injury. Stead claims that Bellerin has not missed many games because of injury. That is true. But throughout the 2016/17 season, Bellerin, while still playing, was continually dealing with an ailing ankle issue. Wenger admitted last April that the ankle injury had been stifling Bellerin’s athletic, pacy style all year. He may have been playing, but he was not totally free from injury.

The second is competition. Bellerin has not had the necessary competition to push his performances, especially this season, as I detailed here. Now, Wenger will have to shoulder the blame for some of this — it is he who he assembles the squad. But it does not directly pertain to the day-to-day input on the training ground. Such input could very feasibly be present and accurate, but Bellerin, in complacency, does not fully execute it on the pitch.

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So yes, there has been a stalling in the Arsenal defender’s development. And yes, Wenger should share some of the blame for that. But there is more to this situation. There are other factors at play here. They do not absolve or excuse Wenger, but they do defend him to some extent.