Tag Archives: She Wore A Yellow Ribbon

Calum Chambers – Should he stay or should he go?

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Watching the Fulham v Tottenham game at the weekend, the stand out performer dominating the middle of the park was Calum Chambers.

The on loan Arsenal man was one of the few outstanding players in a very poor Fulham team. It had many calling for his return to the club in the summer.

Chambers turned 24 a couple of days ago and signed a new 4-year-deal back in July last year.

After a good start to his Arsenal career, he has struggled to nail down a place in the squad. Fulham is his second loan deal after a year spent in Middlesbrough during their 2016/17 relegation season.

What should Arsenal do with the not-so-young-central defender?

Keep, replace Laurent Koscielny

Club captain Laurent Koscielny rolled back the years against Chelsea, but team is clearly running out for the old dog.

Most Arsenal fans want a strong, first choice centre back to partner Sokratis in the long term. We can all agree that Calum Chambers is not that man. Neither is Shkodran Mustafi. Rob Holding has arguably moved ahead of Koscielny, Mustafi and Chambers.

In 2019/20 Koscielny will be, at best, 4th choice centre back being Sokratis, Mustafi/replacement and Rob Holding. Could Calum Chambers return and be 4th choice central defender? Certainly.

Keep, replace Mohamed Elneny

At Fulham, Calum Chambers joined as a centre back but was soon moved to central midfield. It was in the middle of the park he ran the game for Fulham against Tottenham.

He was composed on the ball, short and long passing, as well as stopping Tottenham attacks at will. He was Man of the Match.

Arsenal’s current midfield options are Lucas Torreira, Granit Xhaka, Matteo Guendouzi, Mohamed Elneny and Ainsley Maitland-Niles. Could Calum Chamber take Elneny’s place in the squad? Certainly.

Cover Hector Bellerin

Roll back to 2014 when Arsenal signed Chambers for £16million, he was a right back – having made 22 Premier League appearances for Southampton in 2013/14.

With Stephan Lichsteiner set to leave in the summer, and Hector Bellerin’s injury, we clearly need to address the right back situation next season.

Maitland-Niles is an option at right back, and will surely get his chance in the coming weeks and months. Could Calum Chambers provide cover to Hector Bellerin? Certainly.

All of the above

So he could be 4th choice centre back, 4th choice central midfielder and 2/3rd choice right back. Is this a role that he could play in one go, covering depending who is injured? Certainly.

Sell

The final option is sell.

After his string of performances, Arsenal could easily get £20million or more for a home grown, 24-year-old player.

At Premier League level who would be a regular starter for a mid-to-lower league team, or a newly promoted one.

You could see him fitting in at Derby County. He was heavily linked with a £16million move to Crystal Palace last season.

The likes of Bournemouth have spent big in January for players who are inferior to Chambers (£19milion for Dominic Solanke!). He would certainly get into their team, as well as Brighton and West Ham.

If we sold him, there would be no shortage of takers.

Arsenal have been awful at selling players in recent years. We have let over £200m worth of talent exit, getting little in return.

Imagine the scenario. We get £20million for Chambers; we also sell Mustafi. We could get in the region of £35million for a Premier League, international proven central defender. That is £55million bought in selling a central defender not currently in the squad, and one more that we can improve on.

That total could then go towards a new defender.

For £55million+ we could get a quality central defender. There are not too many defenders in the world that would be out of our reach.

You then have the new central defender, Sokratis, Holding, Koscielny and Mavropanos as the options.

Should we learn our lesson with Chambers. Cash in on a player who will never quite be good enough, and reinvest that elsewhere on someone that improves our first team without weakening the squad? Certainly.

I would keep all options on the table.

Keenos

Sven Going: What now for Arsenal’s Recruitment?

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The news we all knew was coming broke yesterday that Arsenal Head of Recruitment Sven Mislintat was to leave the club.

Mislintat was an excellent appointment. He seemed to fit the mould of where the club is right now.

At Borussia Dortmund he oversaw a scouting department which excelled in finding fairly unknown gems from mid table sides or young players struggling for a break through. From Ousmane Dembélé to Marco Rues, Emre Mor to Shinji Kagawa. He was clearly good at his job.

Dortmund are currently 6 points clear of Bayern Munich at the top of the Bundesliga. This is hugely to do with their excellent recruitment policy, which Mislintat oversaw before leaving for Arsenal in 2017.

Saying that, he was just one piece of the jigsaw when he was at Dortmund.

He does not scout every player. He did not unearth every gem. He worked with a network of scouts across Europe and beyond who would recommend players to him. He will then make the decision whether they were worth a closer look, and perusing.

To put it simply, he was not the only person involved in Dortmund’s intelligent recruitment process, although he did head up the department.

Likewise at Arsenal, in the year he has been here, we have seen some good players join. Namely Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi.

Both players fit the Mislintat mould.

Torreira was very well known, performing well in a mid-table Serie A team. Many in Italy rated the Uruguayan as one of the top 3 defensive midfielders in Italy last season.

He was not an unknown, but he certainly was not well known outside of Serie A watchers.

Likewise Guendouzi was playing in Ligue 2 in France prior to us signing him. He has come out of nowhere.

However Mislintat would not have “discovered” these players on his own. That is not how scouting works. And certainly not the Head of Recruitment’s role.

As Head of Recruitment, it was Mislintat’s job to oversee his network of scouts, employ them, manage them. He would then run the final rule over a player prior to recommending him to the powers that be.

By the time a Head of Recruitment sees a player, the local scout might have already watched him a dozen times or more.

Back under Arsene Wenger, it was always known when Arsenal were heavily interested in a player as Steve Rowley would turn up to watch him. This was often seen as the final scouting mission prior to making a decision whether to buy or not.

Mislintat was the same. He would not have watched every single player. He was not down Hackney Marshes looking for the gems himself. He had a network of scouts, mainly mean and women who had been at Arsenal for some time.

He also had his own contacts. Agents. Freelance scouts. People who would recommend players to him.

He was certainly not a Nowhere Man.

For whatever reason, Mislintat decided to hand in his two weeks notice. There has been plenty of speculation as to why he did this.

He felt pushed to the side when Raul Sanllehi took over from Ivan Gazidis, and was unhappy about the Spaniard looking to recruit a Technical Director. He had a falling out with Arsenal’s existing scouting network, unhappy that they were (in his eyes) not doing what he was demanding. That he was homesick. After 15 years at Dortmund and a lifetime living in the city, he decided to try out a new job, with a new company, in a new country. It did not work out.

An interesting theory I have read made up is that he actually had a restrictive covenants clause in his contract with Borussia Dortmund which stipulated that if he left the club, he was unable to work for another German club for 12 months. That the plan was always to join Bayern Munich, but he has to park himself somewhere for a year before making the move.

Whatever the reason, he is now going, and like everything Arsenal related, it has become huge news.

The fact that no one can name who the Chief Scout of Head of Recruitment at Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester City, Manchester United or Liverpool sums it up. Who does the job at Juventus, Monaco, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid or Bayern Munich? The fact is, no one could name who their “Sven Mislintat” is, yet they are hugely successful clubs who have recruited well over the years.

Hell, look at Sampdoria.

They found Lucas Torreira somewhere in Uruguay, bought him to Italy and he became a superstar. Who was the guy who did that? I have no idea.

The point I am making is that good recruitment is beyond one man. It is a team effort. From boots on the ground to the negotiating team. It is more than just one man.

Whilst Mislintat might have been one of the best, he is not the only top end Head of Recruitment of Chief Scout out there. He is not the only man with a track record of recruiting talented players whilst working on a budget.

Francis Cagigao is one man who has been heavily linked with Mislintat’s old role overnight.

Cagigao is a former Arsenal youth player. Despite his name, he was born and bred in London, the son of Spanish parents, winning the FA Youth Cup with the club in 1988.

For a long time he was Arsenal’s man in Spain and has been working with the club for over 20 years.

The first player he recommended to the club was Lauren.  He has also been credited with being involved in the recruitment of Cesc Fabregas, Alexis Sanchez, Hector Bellerin, Santi Cazorla, Jose Antonio Reyes and Fran Merida.

In 2017, he was promoted to Head of International Recruitment following interest from clubs in Spain.

An exclusive in the Evening Standard back in 2017, suggested Arsenal were considering him for a new role as their sporting director.

Sanllehi has been looking to recruit a Technical Director for some time. It is a role that could incorporate the majority of roles undertaken by a Head of Recruitment, or he might decide to keep the roles separate, promoting Cagigao to Head of Recruitment and then going out and getting in a Technical Director.

One thing that is for certain, Arsenal were a success before Mislintat – both on the pitch and in recruiting players – and we will be a success after.

Our fans just have a habit of making a mountain out of a molehill.

Keenos

FIVE candidates to replace Hector Bellerin

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There has not yet been official news out over the state of Hector Bellerin’s injury. Post match, Unai Emery described it as “not positive on first impression”.

From my years of watching football, it is safe to say that the Spanish right back will be out for the season.

It was one of those injuries where no one is near him, it was innocuous. The referee stopped play straight away and it was clear it was something serious. Whether is is an ACL injury or some other injury that we will now all pretend to be experts in, he will be out for some time. He might not return the same player.

With 10 days to go in the transfer window, Emery and the management  team have a decision to be made.

Do they attempt to bring someone in, or do they replace from within?

FIVE

The experienced right back was bought in to cover Hector Bellerin in case he got injured and has already started 13 games this season. It looks like father time has caught up on the serial winner.

He has been fairly average when playing. Some would be a lot harsher than that – although his worst performances have come when playing out of position in the centre of defence.

I doubt he will be with us next season, however he might find himself with a role to play this.

Will be the choice if we go for experience.

Ainsley Maitland-Niles

Against West Ham, Maitland-Niles was at right wing back ahead of Lichtsteiner. Although he was substituted on the half hour for Bellerin.

Whilst the utility man might see his future as a winger, and some fans see him as a central midfielder, it is at full back where he has started the vast majority of his games for Arsenal.

Of his 23 starts for Arsenal i neither the Premier League or Europa League, 19 have come at full back (14 at left back). His future at the club could well be as a full back.

Last season he was picked ahead of both Saed Kolasinac and Nacho Monreal at left back, such was his good form.

He has been out of form this season, but that is a lot to do with a lack of consistency in playing position.

Maitland-Niles certainly has the physical attributes to play at full back, he has pace and power and the engine to get up and down. He would also provide us the attacking outlet that the side relies on – our full backs are our width.

Defensive naivety is the concern.

He can switch off, or jog back when caught up the field. Although this is not unusual for a young full back.

Given the opportunity to play consistently at right back, his defensive instincts will naturally improve. He will also have Sokratis inside him and  – if we stick to the mdifield 3 who started against Chelsea – Lucas Torreira ahead.

If Maitland-Niles gets the chance, and proves himself to be adequate cover for Bellerin, it would mean we would not need to go out into the market in the summer to buy cover for Bellerin. The Englishman could step up as his long term understudy.

Carl Jenkinson

One of the criticisms of Maitland-Niles is “he is not a right back”. This line of thinking would lead some to support Carl Jenkinson starting.

It is incredible to think that Jenkinson turns 27 in February. He is certainly living the dream. But is living the dream enough?

He is certainly not a bad player – and it is easy to forget that he spent a year and a half at West Ham playing consistently at right back.

A bit like Maitland-Niles, if he gets a chance and takes it, the club may well decide that he is an adequate mid-term back up for Bellerin.

Personally I think he has had his chance, and it is time for someone else to get one.

If we are going to “give someone a chance” I would rather it be the younger man in Maitland-Niles.

Shkodran Mustafi

If I say we had a World Cup winning right back in our squad, you would probably ask “who?”. that man is German international Shkodran Mustafi.

Back in 2014, he was selected to start at right back in Germany’s round of 16 match against Algeria. It was only an injury that stopped him seeing out the tournament as Germany’s first choice full back.

Mustafi could do a job at right back, like he has done numerous times throughout his career. He would provide decent defensive cover, over and above anyone else on this list. However he will not provide any attacking threat.

At Arsenal, it is the full backs that give us the width. With no recognised wingers, playing Mustafi at right back would give us little to no threat on the right hand side.

Sign Someone

The last candidate is a new signing.

Whether it be a loan signing or a permanent signing, we would have 10 days to go out into the transfer market and secure someone.

The problem is who would we secure?

Someone on loan would likely not be playing at the club they are at. If they are not playing at AC Milan, Roma or whoever, would they then be a better option than Maitland-Niles? And would a top club in Europe, chasing a Champions League place, really want to loan out their second choice right back?

The alternative option is signing someone on a permanent deal, but who?

Do we go for someone who could be long term understudy for Bellerin? And if so how much should we invest in them – Aaron Wan-Bissaka would be north of £20m. Or do we go big. Go for someone better than Bellerin who will actually be his long term replacement. But is spending £35m+ on a right back sensible when we have so many other positions to upgrade on.

https://twitter.com/KeenosAFC/status/1086946110701215745

Keenos