Arsenal: 3 improvements Dani Ceballos must make if he stays

1. Consistency

What do all these things have in common? You never know what to expect from Dani Ceballos. He could do anything, good or bad. We already have one wildly inconsistent creative midfielder. His name is Mesut Ozil and we’d rather not have another such situation.

By comparison, Ceballos has often been likened to Santi Cazorla, but the big difference is we knew what we could count on Cazorla for. Every single match, he gave us exactly what we needed and even when he didn’t thrive, he knew how to establish and retain a baseline of production so that even his poor matches weren’t debilitating.

Ceballos hasn’t found that baseline yet. That bare minimum that we can count on him for and until he does, he is not going to be a viable midfield solution. Arsenal as a club is already so inconsistent. Having a slew of players who are inconsistent on an individual level just exacerbates that problem.

This may just be part of his growth. He’s still young and needs time to develop. Once he has that, the baseline should start to appear, but we can’t wait forever.