Arsenal and Ainsley Maitland-Niles: We’ve literally been here before

Arsenal want to give Ainsley Maitland-Niles a future in the midfield, but it doesn’t look to be any closer. Can we really make the same mistake again?

I like to believe in the power of positive thinking and, as an Arsenal fan, it has served me well. There’s no point dwelling on the negatives and what can go wrong, because that’s just a miserable way to go about life in general, football included.

That said, for as positively as I want to think about this club and their handling of certain situations, I can’t help but acknowledge that their track record of repeating the same frustrating mistakes isn’t that great.

Take, for instance, the streak of selling players to direct rivals. That wasn’t fun. Yet it kept happening, time and time again.

I’ve begun with this prelude because I worry about Ainsley Maitland-Niles. The young man is a tremendous athlete with a bright future, but he wants to spend it as a midfielder, because that is his preferred position.

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He hasn’t been given a chance yet to clamp down on that position because of how strong the Gunner’s midfield is and, in exchange, he has been playing as a fullback an wingback, both very effectively.

But in the meantime, he hasn’t been playing his preferred position and now, as things stand, he isn’t getting any closer. With the leftback situation an utter mess, it stands to reason that Maitland-Niles would be the one to step into the fold. He has more experience there than any other option.

And he will probably do quite well with the position, which will then prompt Unai Emery to want to use him there more because that is what you do when something works out – you do more of it.

All the while, Maitland-Niles is moving closer to a future he hasn’t exactly expressed an interest in while not getting any closer to a future in midfield, where he belongs.

The parallel with Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has been brought up before, and I think it’s time to bring it up again. We can’t really make the same mistake, can we? We can’t really let him become so disenchanted with the the club, like his counterpart now at Liverpool, that he leaves, right?

I’m talking to myself here. Of course we can’t. He will be in the midfield in no time. Problem solved.