It’s almost the end of June and everybody’s wondering who’s going to be lining up in the Arsenal attack next season. Will it be Mbappe, Lacazette or Giroud? But instead of focusing on Arsenal’s potential attack, I’m going to talk about two players in our defensive ranks: Calum Chambers and Rob Holding. The opening day pairing of last season are both on duty for England’s under 21’s at the moment getting ready for a Euro semi-final against Germany, which Chambers is looking forward too.
The under 21’s won their group as they picked two wins and a draw to meet Germany in the semis. Chambers saw himself start every group game at centre back with Holding on the bench, and with that in mind, it made me think about Arsenal’s centre-back situation for next season.
Last year, despite the pair unexpectedly starting together on the opening day against Liverpool, we didn’t see a great deal of them at The Emirates over the course of the season, with Chambers going on loan to Middlesbrough and Holding only coming into the team regularly later in the season. With it not looking like that will be the case next season it makes me wonder how they’ll be used next season.
Thankfully, we’ve seen the beginning of Chambers’ transition to a centre-back while he was on loan at Middlesbrough, helping them concede the 10th least goals in the league, which goes to show where they needed to improve to stay in the league. During his Euro campaign this summer he’s only conceded once against Slovakia which all looks very encouraging. Whether he can carry this form into next season and challenge for a starting spot at Arsenal, we’ll have to wait and see, but at the age of 22 it looks like he’s ready to take on that challenge.
But on the other hand, there’s Rob Holding, or Rob Holdini as he’s known by many on twitter. The 21-year-old had a mixed start to his Arsenal career after getting thrown in at the deep end against Liverpool and then putting in a great performance against Leicester the next week, a performance which prompted the now-famous Wenger quote “I’m sorry he didn’t cost £55million”. Afterwards, with the return of Laurent Koscielny and signing of Shkodran Mustafi it was a while before we saw Holding on a regular basis again but it was worth the wait. After the switch to a three at the back we saw Holding excel and prove that he is able to mix it with the best as he won every game he played since the system change.
With Per Mertesacker, Gabriel, Koscielny and Mustafi all rightly expecting first-team football next season we’d hopefully see more of the 3-4-2-1 formation next year. With more central defensive spaces to fill this could make it just that bit easier for them to get into the side, much like Holding last season. With last season in mind I’d say that Holding has the advantage at the moment but who knows what will happen, maybe Chambers’ summer form can put him in the mix.
This was just a little thought I had but I think it could be quite realistic to see at least one of them cement their name in the starting side next year. Anyway, I’ll let everyone get back to fantasising about which new strikers we might be getting.
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