Arsenal: The strangest thing about Calum Chambers loan

It’s easy to look around and wonder, now, why Arsenal loaned out Calum Chambers, but even beyond the moment, the bigger question still needs to be answered.

Arsenal‘s defense is very segmented. You have the two starters, Sokratis and Shkodran Mustafi, and you have the two reserves/youth prospects Rob Holding and Konstantinos Mavropanos. That keeps things nice and easily divided, there’s no confusing who is who.

There is a bit of a lack of internal competition, but not everything can be perfect. But… it really could have been. Because Calum Chambers should absolutely be here, competing for his spot on the first team. The only reason he is not is because he was loaned out to Fulham for the year.

Now, it’s easy to look around at the injury to Sokratis and the ongoing absence of Konstantinos Mavropanos, and say “well, we should have done that differently.” Hindsight is 20/20, after all. But that isn’t where I draw my primary grievance from.

My primary grievance comes from the very nature of why this move needed to happen. As in, why Calum Chambers, of all people? The Englishman was just coming around as a potential first-team threat, he was a regular in the defense to close out the year and did quite well with it and he was that perfect bridge between the starters and the reserves to the point that he could have fit into both camps rather comfortably.

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He had the youth of the reserves and the growing skill of the starters. He was in the exact place that he needed to be to fill in wherever he was needed and still find reliable playing time no matter the situation, no matter the competition.

It’s a question that hasn’t been sufficiently answered. If the objective was to clear out space to make selection easier on the defense, why not loan out Holding, who needs development far more than Chambers, who has already completed a successful one-year loan, when he was sent to Middlesbrough? The question has to be answered: Why Calum Chambers?

Unai Emery had just talked about his big plans for Chambers, he had just signed a new deal, and then, out of nowhere, he was sent off where we can’t access him and, here we are, just over a month into the season and injuries already have people asking more questions than there are answers.

This was an avoidable situation. Thankfully, it was one of the few mistakes made this past summer transfer window, and that counts for something.