Arsenal: Let’s just not even talk about Calum Chambers, please

Arsenal’s defense is in a pickle. Not a crisis-sized pickle, but still a pickle. That doesn’t mean we need to start up about Calum Chambers though. Yet here I go…

There haven’t been a lot of things that I found myself raging about regarding Arsenal this year. All in all, I think it’s been pretty solid. Unai Emery is one intelligent dude and the guys we have in charge have a clear vision for the club, a vision that is panning out already.

That said, if there is one thing that I found myself scratching my head about, it was the Calum Chambers loan. Why you would send off a guy who had proven himself as the exact type of central defender that we utilize, who had more experience that Rob Holding and had even earned a starting role, was beyond me.

Not least of all because he had already served his loan time at Boro, where he did a tremendous job on a shockingly good defense.

Now that Rob Holding is out for the year, the immediate response was to turn to Calum Chambers, the man that had been dealt. Because surely they could just recall him and give him what he should have had all along.

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Only, things have changed. Chambers can’t be recalled, because that wasn’t part of the deal. Not only can he not be recalled, but the trajectory for Chambers might not be as had initially been expected. he has spent more time in the midfield for Fulham, pretty successfully, I might add, than in the center of the defense.

Maybe this was the plan all along. Maybe Emery has a plan, or whoever pioneered this loan move has a plan, but whatever the case, Chambers isn’t the man, he was never going to be the man, and I’d be shocked if he was the man at any point in the future.

So why even talk about it, ignoring the fact that I just have?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Holding’s injury does not constitute a crisis. There are still the likes of Koscielny and Mavropanos set to return and if it gets really dicey, we have experience in Monreal and Lichtsteiner to fill the gaps. No harm no foul. The fact that Mustafi and Sokratis both now have suspensions (and that injury to Mustafi) pushes closer to a crisis, but no good comes from beating our heads against the wall about Chambers, as useful as he would be here.

The problem with Chambers isn’t that he isn’t available for recall, it’s that he was never part of the plan at all. And with that, I’ll shut up about it.