Gabriel is Arsenal’s Light at the End of the Tunnel

Gabriel Magalhaes has won the Arsenal Player of the Month. Again.

Lost in a sea of mediocrity and shortcomings, how Gabriel has managed to remain afloat and be head and shoulders above his more experienced Arsenal teammates has almost been taken for granted.

Every week the team head out with expected disappointment, while the summer signing is presumed to be one of the better, if not the best, on the day.

Early signs of progress were rightly tempered for fear of crushing his shoulders with expectation, yet the level of his performances have been kept to such a high standard that on the rare occasion supporters haven’t been guilty of overhyping, we probably should have.

Gabriel has been immense.

https://twitter.com/Arsenal/status/1336646404593348609

Just three months into the season and the Brazilian has notched his third Player of the Season gong. Such accolades are always tinged with recency bias, while his beaming smile is enough to garner a good handful of votes alone, but this is no fluke.

Amid a horrendous season – one in which Gabriel has scored 20% of his side’s Premier League goals – the 22-year-old offers a glimmer of what this Arsenal side could look like. Is that clutching at straws? Quite possibly. But as one of the two key signings Mikel Arteta made over the summer window, the quality of individual the club are looking to bring in offers light at the end of the tunnel.

Some desperately dreadful footballers remain at this club who are coming towards the end of their spells in north London, some of whom labelled as such out of hope more than expectancy. On the flip side, Gabriel is the embodiment of effective recruiting.

The true measure of reliance Arsenal have on the centre-back won’t be fully realised until he misses a few Premier League matches through injury – touch wood – when his aggressive, belligerently brilliant self is absent from an otherwise weak spine.

Yet to concede from a set-piece this season, boasting the third fewest goals conceded in the Premier League despite some harrowing fixtures being played and with just one bad display to his name, Gabriel shows no signs of abating.

Any vision one conjures up of their ideal Arsenal is frankly wrong unless Gabriel features. Miles and millions of pounds away from being where they want to be, the former Lille man is the first building block on the road to redemption.