Arsenal: Calum Chambers the toughest injury since Aaron Ramsey

Calum Chambers was a rare bright spot on this Arsenal defense and now he’s out for the year. This is the hardest injury to bear since Aaron Ramsey.

It didn’t look good when Calum Chambers was getting prepped to be stretchered off the pitch in Arsenal‘s clash with Chelsea. But a burst of optimism came when he was able to walk (or hobble) off the pitch.

That optimism has now been effectively run through a meat grinder and incinerated. Calum Chambers is out for the year and with it, the hopes of getting this defense kickstarted before the summer months.

We know what’s coming in the summer. William Saliba is joining, Sokratis will probably be off (Mustafi too) and Rob Holding will be back to healthy. There’s plenty of optimism there. But we have to get there first, and our best hope at that getting there with some degree of comfort and happiness was Calum Chambers.

Chambers has been our best centerback this year, by a long shot. And that’s saying something, seeing as how David Luiz and Sokratis have been the most utilized centerbacks.

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Chambers just strikes the perfect balance between the now and then future. He’s young enough to be around for a long time, he has shown tremendous growth from the time he first arrived at the club and he has earned the spot time and time again. Mikel Arteta finally understood that, and now we are cruelly not going to be able to follow up on that faith until the new season at the earliest.

This puts the defense in a pickle, because we’re back to counting on Luiz and Sokratis. Or Mustafi. The same cast of characters that have let us down so many times. Now, Luiz has looked good under Arteta, so maybe we can find some optimism there, but even so, Luiz is not long for this club. Chambers can be. And that’s why we wanted to kickstart the next era of this defense now.

I can’t remember being this disheartened about an injury since Aaron Ramsey. Ramsey would always manage to get hurt just as he was starting to take flight and we’d be forced to fondly remember him rather than actively see him.

Hopefully, Chambers can stay healthier than Ramsey did. Hopefully this doesn’t become a regular thing. And hopefully Arteta is still going to be willing to invest enough faith in Chambers to not oversaturate the defense this summer.