Arsenal: How has Denis Suarez become so divisive?

Denis Suarez wasn’t a “failure” at Arsenal. He wasn’t an anything. There’s absolutely no reason why he has so divided opinions.

Denis Suarez will not be remembered as an Arsenal player. He played 95 minutes with the club before getting hurt. Does that mean that he is a failure? Absolutely not. He was a nothing. You don’t fail by not playing. You fail by being ineffective when you do play.

That’s why I can’t figure out the current stream of logic, and the recent reports that Sven Mislintat was “dismayed” by the loan move for Denis Suarez, prior to Mislintat’s departure from the club.

For starters, Suarez was brought for a specific reason—creating chances. There was a gap in the club at the time and he was tagged as a solution to that problem. But as soon as he was brought in, Henrikh Mkhitaryan hit his hot streak, Mesut Ozil even put together some form and the Gunners suddenly didn’t need Suarez as much as they once did.

So he didn’t play much at first, though in what little capacity we did see him, he got better and better before his ultimate injury.

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Which leads to the next point, and that’s that he didn’t end up blocking anyone. Apparently Mislintat urged Emery to give the opportunity to Joe Willock and Bukayo Saka, but Emery overruled.

That’s unfortunate, but given the route that Suarez ended up taking, he didn’t block anyone. So that “dismay” that Mislintat reportedly felt seems a bit overdone, since what little opportunity there was still ended up going to youth options.

And finally, in regard to him being a “failure”… it was a loan. The nature of a loan means that he is on trial. If we like him, we keep him, if not, we don’t. We didn’t, so we didn’t. What did we actually lose by bringing in Suarez? Absolutely nothing. Not a thing. It was January, it’s not like we could have bought someone else, we didn’t have the money and the loan move made more sense. From the off, he was failure-proof because we had nothing to lose.

That’s why I don’t get why we are still talking about him. Why we are still whining about the decision. We don’t know how well he might have done. We never will. Because the trial ended abruptly with an injury, and that was that. Nothing lost, nothing gained.