24-years-old
3 league starts 2 seasons
0 league goals for 2 years
And an injury record that looks like this:
If Edu had sanctioned a £35m move for a player with these credentials, we would all be rightly up in arms. So the question is: Why are fans up in arms over selling a player with this record?
Emile Smith Rowe is almost certainly off to Fulham in a deal worth £35m and all I keep seeing is how it is a move that “Arsenal would forget” and “one of the biggest mistakes in our history”.
Lets get things right, Smith Rowe had a fantastic season in 2021/22, but before and since that season, he has done very little.
Big things were expected of ESR as he looked to progress from the star of the academy to senior pro. But the concerns were already there.
Those that had been following the Croydon youngsters years through would have known he had his injury issues. Many would have put them down to growing pains, and hoped that as he grew into being a man, they would subside. They never did.
2018/19 was penciled in as the year he would make the step up into senior football, and he showed what he could do with 2 goals in the Europa League. But he was not getting the game time to develop due to a groin injury. The decision was made to loan him to RB Leipzig in the second half of the season.
After signing, Leipzig discovered that Smith Rowe was not fully recovered from that groin injury.
Leipzig manager Ralf Ragnick would go on to say : “He will not be fully training with us in the next two to three weeks”.
That two or three weeks would extend to nearly the end of the season as ESR suffered a hamstring injury just as he had fully recovered from the groin injury. Due to his injury issues, he only played a total of 28 minutes in three substitute appearances during his time at Leipzig.
Another groin injury would halt Smith Rowe’s progress into the Arsenal squad at the beginning of the 2019/20 season. The club then decided to loan him out once more to get regular minutes, this time joining Huddersfield Town.
Whilst he remained injury free for his time in Yorkshire, The Terriers boss Dan Cowley spoke about how he needed to be “very protective” of Smith Rowe due to his fragility.
Now 20, it felt like 2020 was going to be Smith Rowe’s “make it or break it” season. And he started off the year once again with an injury which would rule him out of the first half of the season.
A new manager gave Smith Rowe new hope, and he would quickly establish himself in Mikel Arteta’s new look Arsenal side, memorably scoring the winner against Chelsea in May 2020.
In 2021/22, Smith Rowe looked like he had finally cracked senior football. He was playing week in, week out for The Arsenal, and scoring goals. With 11 in all competitions, only fellow youngster Bukayo Saka would score more! And then history began repeating itself.
2022/23 would start with yet another groin injury. That ruled him out until January 2023 and he would struggled to reintegrate himself into Arteta’s plans as we chased the title.
Arteta could not take the risk giving him minutes as we chased the league title, and nor was he important enough to the team to get that integration.
Smith Rowe had also found himself behind the in-form Gabriel Martinelli and new signing Leandro Trossard in the pecking order. No one could have made the case that he should have got playing time ahead of those two. He would fail to start in the league, playing just 164 minutes.
Now 23, Smith Rowe’s head was on the chopping board last summer as Arteta and Edu continued to rebuild the squad. Fitness was clearly becoming a huge factor in the way Arteta valued a player, and the core was being build around the likes of Ben White, William Saliba, Gabriel, Declan Rice, Martin Odegaard, Kai Havertz and Bukayo Saka. Players that always seem to be available.
A late decision was made not to sell Smith Rowe ahead of the 2023/24 season, and the clubs loyalty to the Hale End graduate was another injury. This time a knee injury curtailing his season.
Like 12 months before, Arteta could not afford to re-integrate Smith Rowe into the playing squad as we chased down Liverpool and Manchester City. He ended up starting just 3 league games, and failing to score for the second season in row.
Fans might bemoan that his lack of goals were due to a lack of playing time. But you can not push for playing if you can not stay fit.
In the 6 seasons since 2018, Smith Rowe has been sidelined with a long term injury in 5 of them. On 4 occasions, he had picked up that long term injury by September. Huge questions would have been asked about his conditioning.
Was this a lad who was not looking after himself away from the training ground, so had to work double hard to get fit in training, which in turn led to injury? Or is he just a modern day Darren Anderton? All the talent but his body can not cope.
After playing so little in 2-years, it should be no surprise that Smith Rowe is out the door. And I think the club have done well to get around £35m for a 24-year-old with just a good 15 months of regular top flight football under his belt.
I wish Smith Rowe all the luck in the world. He is one of our own. But being one of your own is not enough. You need to also have the ability, the drive and the availability.
Smith Rowe had the ability, he just does not have the availability.
If after reading this you are still criticising the club for selling Smith Rowe, just remember how you angry clicked on the title of this blog, and was already formulating how you was going portray your anger towards Edu on Facebook or Twitter.
You can not be angry that we are selling Smith Rowe if you would also be angry about us signing someone with Smith Rowe’s record.
We move on…
Keenos
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon 