Arsenal: Come what may, Kieran Tierney has time on his side

This season has been a complete nightmare for Kieran Tierney. He’s barely had a toe on the pitch for Arsenal but no matter what, time is on his side.

Last summer was a tremendous success for Arsenal, as they signed so many players that it was hard to pick out who was the most exciting. It was pretty much universal. And Kieran Tierney was no exception. With Nacho Monreal leaving the club, Tierney came in as the long-term replacement and everyone was thrilled.

Needless to say, Tierney has not carried through on that excitement, but at no fault of his own. He’s been hurt all year, including his latest injury, in which he dislocated his shoulder three times in the span of ten minutes.

According to Tierney himself, this has been the worst period of his life. Easy to see why. He’s just made a huge step in his career to move to a top tier team where he was the shoo-in starter and he hasn’t been able to play. At all. That sucks.

But no matter what happens with Tierney now, time is on his side one way or the other. Even if the pause were to end tomorrow and he wasn’t able to return to action, he’s still just starting out the exciting part of his career.

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Maybe that’s small consolation, but he’s on the mend, he’ll be back before the start of next season and as long as we have him at the start of next season, it’s not like that much was lost. We’ve seen from the few appearances he’s made this year that he’s got the chops to perform at the Premier League level.

That’s really all we need to know. It means that when he gets back, he can be plugged right in. Sure, there may be rust, but the quality is there and he can do the job we brought him in to do.

All that said, the pause won’t end tomorrow, as the tentative return date has been pushed back again to April 30th. Meaning that time is even more on Tierney’s side than it already was when the season was still underway.

In these uncertain times, sometimes the best we can do is pick out small positives, but for Tierney and his current situation, there’s nothing small about it. He will be able to put this nightmare behind him in no time.