In football, as in many other aspects of life, there comes that moment when new possibilities present themselves and a new direction maybe needs to be seized upon. That moment is not always so patently obvious. You are potentially aware that you may have arrived at the moment, or equally maybe you are not quite there yet but are somewhere near it, so is it really the right time? Is this the actual moment or are we still approaching it? Stick or twist? If you go too soon then it could all go very wrong but dither and you miss the moment which may not present itself again for a long time.

Right then, my ears are burning. I can hear you all saying, “enough of the Machiavellian, Cantanaesque seagulls being thrown from the trawler ramblings GoonerB, what the hell are you on about?”

Well football clubs are often no different to big corporations in other industries, and also even all of us as individuals as we progress through life, in that they/we reach a crossroads at times in having to decide whether to stick on the road you are on, because its familiarity feels safer, or to take a different road that is more unknown and is full of uncertainty but that may well just have that pot of gold at the end of it.

Still too many seagulls and trawlers?……sorry, I digress.

What I am referring to is our promotion of the younger players, or the more untested ones, into the 1st team, and as importantly, into their strongest positions. Sure we have been integrating some of them recently, but is now the time to really go for broke? Is now the time to take that different road, and really push them through rather than just flirting with it?

Yesterday’s discussion threw a lot of debate up about this. Here are a few snippets:

This from JM

Chambers’s best long term position in our 1st team will be the DM/HM position, this season and the next season onwards.

He has shown to be able defend and attack competently whenever he played in our matches (EPL, EL, EFL cup).

– That all important equalising goal against Villa (collecting the cross from Guendouzi and after his intial cutback was blocked, he was first to steal ahead of the defender, calmly controlled the ball with one touch and lifted it back into the net over the GK with his next touch.
– 3 assists in the match against Forest (the first a no hesitation 1st-timed cross to pick up Gabriel from a right-side position; next a measured cut back from left-side position to Nelson; a last a nice pass to Gabriel for his 2nd goal and our 5th.)
– he has not made too many errors when he played so far in defence (CB, RB and LB in the matches against Newcastle, Villa, Frankfurt and Forest).

This season, when every 1st team player is fit, our defence and midfield could be:

Tierney, Holding, Luiz/Sokratis, Bellerin;
Chambers, Guendouzi/Torreira/Maitland-Niles, Willock/Ceballos/Ozil

Next season onwards, with Saliba coming in (excluding any newer additions),

Tierney, Holding, Saliba/Sokratis, Bellerin;
Chambers/Luiz, Torreira/Maitland-Niles, Willock/Guendouzi

 

This from FGG

Football moves so quickly these days and I think everyone gets caught up in the last 3 games and forgets everything that’s come before! I agree that there is absolutely no telling how good or bad we will be with Xhaka and Sok being replaced by Chambers and Holding, but I do think that given our current defensive frailties, it’s certainly worth finding out.

Football just seems to be so black or white these days and it becomes embarrassing at times. Saw an article the other day with Merson questioning wether Spurs should sack the manager. If they win a few games he will be calling them title challengers again! It’s utterly ridiculous.

I must say though that I do like the idea of 3 of our back 4 being British players. I think a bit of an English injection wouldn’t be a bad thing, and with Willock, AMN, Saka, ESR and Nelson in the squad we seem to be getting back to that a little bit.

This from LB

Some people seem to think that things can’t get worse by removing Xhaka and replacing him from within the present squad — they can, they can be an awful lot worse, same goes for Sokratis and Luiz, the idea that Holding and Chambers are some how our saviours in waiting is absolutely ridiculous.

This also from LB

Slim, I must say that I think I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that there is a part of me that would really like to see if Holding and Chambers could do better than Sokratis and Luiz.

Over the coarse of a long season I feel certain at some point we will find this out.

Should be interesting.

And finally, this from Rocky

For what it’s worth LB, I accept the caution that goes with thinking that any returning player or non-regular starter is going to be the Messiah to answer all our problems. Usually they just turn out to be a very naughty boy.

But I feel Chambo has already shown enough for us this season (on top of his ‘player of the year’ at Fulham last season) to be a serious contender for a starting place.

Context is always important. The context at Arsenal is that we are leaking goals like a sieve that’s been hit by a shotgun. We concede more attempts on goal than just about any grown-up team in Europe.

So I’d say let’s see if Holding and Chambers can do better. They don’t have to be the answer to all our problems but if they can make us 20% better defensively that will probably translate into extra points we wouldn’t otherwise get.

And I know, I know, our defensive weakness is not just about the defenders…

There were many more examples, so my apologies if I have left you out and you’d hoped to be immortalised on here. Similarly my apologies go out if I included you and you wanted to remain more incognito 🙂 I actually agree with every statement from those I put up. The general consensus is that we should try something new and exciting, but that we have no guarantee at this stage as to whether it will work out for us or improve us.

There was something else to consider from some of yesterdays comments. There was a fair bit of talk about other potential players in certain positions that we may need to bring in. How do we know we don’t already have those players in the likes of Chambers, Willock, Guendozi and ESR? If we bring in 2-3 others in the midfield department then I doubt we are asking these new players to be back up to our emerging promising youngsters. We are effectively replacing the above. How long before our own boys move on?

It is indeed far from certain whether those players mentioned, that we already have, can give us the world class we need in certain positions, but the only way to know is to find out directly. We need to play them to find out and to ensure we do not miss the moment.

What is the moment in this case? Well for me it is the next two transfer windows. We need to play these boys so that we know what we do or don’t need before we arrive at that point. Failure to do this and the uncertainties that we have currently will still be the same and we will have missed our moment. I actually felt we missed moments or opportunities in the latter Wenger years to try an alternate route, keeping on the same old comfortable pathway, but ultimately still as oblivious as ever about what we really had once transfer windows came about and decisions needed to be made.

We have literally had a failed generation of promising young players that have not been played at the right times but often, more importantly, when played were not played in their best position, the position they could potentially become world class for us in. Let’s not make the same mistakes with the class of 2019.

It is a risk assessment exercise with no guarantee. A judgement call. I personally feel the risk is at the lowest it could possibly be right now to push through the young and the untested players for a couple of reasons. As many have pointed out the experienced and the tried and tested are far from perfect anyway. Also the tried and tested will still be here, there is nowhere for them to go right now, so why not move them into becoming the back up players for the moment and try the new. The risk of it being far worse feels low to me.

As we approach the next two transfer windows we will then know far more, but with greater certainty rather than with wishful thinking. It is also the easier way of moving on certain players that may not be quite right for us. Keep playing them and they often sit tight and refuse to budge, but let them see that someone younger and better has emerged and that their time as the head honcho is over, and they make that decision to move on themselves, with less drama, and with all parties coming out of it reasonably well.

It does indeed seem that the majority of us feel that Emery and the club have arrived at their moment. We do indeed stand at the crossroads, and I for one hope that we don’t go straight on down the more comfortable, better known, but also far from perfect road. Lets take the alternative road, with all its uncertainties because it may just be the road to something far greater.

GoonerB