Arsenal: Alex Iwobi’s journey is simply taking longer than expected

Alex Iwobi has spoken up about how he nearly left Arsenal, but the takeaway from his words is just that his journey has taken longer than expected.

Alex Iwobi has recently spoken out in an interview with the Sun about how he was told he could leave Arsenal at the age of 16. With no contract offer on the table, he was hearing from his friends that he wasn’t wanted.

Obviously that wasn’t the case. Or if it was, it was just a temporary phase, because nowadays, he has become (or re-become) a consistent presence in the first-team set-up, transitioning well from Arsene Wenger to Unai Emery.

It hasn’t been an easy path for Iwobi. And from the sounds of it, it’s been a pretty improbable path as well. He wasn’t given the golden path to stardom, like some 16 year olds have been in the past, and he really gave no reason to think that he would be the next big star until be broke into the first team, by way of support from Arsene Wenger, in 2016 at the age of 20.

At the time, it felt like this was it. His big chance. And he was taking it, incredibly well, playing as an attacking wide midfielder, scoring goals, creating chances and riding high on confidence.

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That didn’t carry over into the next season. Whatever momentum he had built was lost and it took Wenger far too long to either realize this, or to act on it. Whatever the case, Iwobi sputtered in the 2016/17 season and that sputtering carried over into the 2017/18 season, as he floundered in the Wenger system, falling so far out of the picture that he featured in the U23s again.

It looked for awhile that Wenger and the club would cut their losses and sell Iwobi while he still had some value. He was still young and the potential was still there, but his nerves around the opposing goal box were impossible not to notice.

Hearing that this uncertainty goes all the way back to when he was 16 isn’t all that surprising. It just means that he has spent six years trying to find his feet at the club, working hard every step of the way, and now he is here, being rotated in and out of the starting XI in a system that clearly favors him.

He still hasn’t made it all the way though, even if it has been six years. We still see the flaws when he gets around the box – the flaws we saw in the past two seasons. But the improvements are being made.

All in all, this simply means that his journey is taking longer than expected, for both him and the club. Not a big deal. He’s still exciting. He’s still talented. He’s still relevant in the present.