Arsenal: Calum Chambers, wherefore art thou?

Arsenal sent Calum Chambers to Fulham on a season-long loan in the summer. Unai Emery took a risk, depleting his defensive numbers. It is now backfiring.

The loan system is a brilliant way of providing young players who would not usually see much playing time with regular, first-team football, something that is absolutely critical to their development, especially as they look to navigate the stormy waters of transitioning from youth to senior football.

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And Arsenal, in the past, have used it to their advantage with great success. Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, and now Reiss Nelson. All have benefitted greatly from loan spells away from the club, returning with an improved, more rounded skill set, ready to fight for a first-team place in north London.

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But sometimes, it can backfire. There is a balancing act that needs to be played by the manager. While loaning out a certain player may be helpful to their progression as an individual, does it deplete the depth at the position that they play to a detrimental extent? It is a numbers game, after all, and managers must ensure that they are on the right side of it, even as they look to bring talent through.

In the summer, Unai Emery decided to loan Calum Chambers to Fulham for the season. Sokratis and Shkodran Mustafi were the starting pair. Rob Holding was considered a better defender, and Laurent Koscielny and Konstantinos Mavropanos would be soon returning from injury. In Emery’s eyes, Chambers was not needed at the Emirates, and so it made perfect sense to send him to Fulham where he could play regular, Premier League football.

However, even at the time of the decision, many questioned whether Arsenal’s depth was an encompassing as Emery believed. Koscielny was 33 and coming off a ruptured Achilles. Sead Kolasinac, although a left-back, entered the season with a leg injury. Mavropanos’ issues were a little mysterious and difficult to put a timeframe on. There was a worry that Emery may leave himself short in number in defence.

So it has proved. In Sunday’s disappointing 3-2 loss to Southampton, Emery fielded midfielder Granit Xhaka at centre-half for the full 90 minutes and right-back Stephan Lichtsteiner at centre-back for the first half, before switching to a back-four because of another defensive injury to Hector Bellerin. Koscielny was rushed back from his ruptured Achilles to anchor the defence, while Nacho Monreal was forced to start with Kolasinac picking up a thigh injury in training. All in all, Arsenal had four fit defenders to start the game. Two of them were right-backs and the other two were being hurried back from rather extensive injuries.

Add into the mix Bellerin and Lichtsteiner both being forced off thanks to respective problems and it is easy to see how depleted the defensive numbers are, even with Sokratis and Mustafi set to return from suspension. While Chambers is far from the perfect defender, I cannot help but think that he could have been a major help for Emery and his battered defence.

The festive period is also just getting started. The games come thick and fast and Arsenal have illustrated that they don’t really have the squad for it. Chambers would have been an ideal option for Emery to turn to round about now. Instead, he is playing at Fulham, in midfield, without a recall clause. This might well have been a mistake.