The Arsenal youngster Rob Holding arrived at the Emirates in the summer with very little fanfare as he only came from Bolton for a minimal fee, but there are some people who think he is already better in the Gunners defence than the incredibly expensive Shkodran Mustafi who arrived the same summer.
One of his fans is the Arsenal legend Ian Wright, who expressed his annoyance that the 21 year-old wasn’t chosen over Mustafi in the defeat to Tottenham a few weeks ago. Wright, speaking on BT Sport, said: “”For me, what I’ve seen of Rob Holding in a few games, he deserves a chance.
“I think the composure of him, the way he plays, watching him in a massive game against Manchester City in the semi-final.
“He can start that game but then he can’t start a game in the north London derby.
“He is more assured than Gabriel and I feel he is more assured for me than Mustafi if it was my opinion.
“I would have Holding.”
Holding was reinstated for yesterday’s game against Stoke, and was again impressive, although Arsene Wenger thinks he can still improve much further in the future, and become a leader of the back line. “He’s intelligent but at the moment he’s still a bit of an introvert,” Le Prof said after the game.
“When you start as a young player most of the time you focus on your own performance and then later when you are more confident you can go in to a leadership role.”
If he’s like this when he is not very confident, what will he be like in the future?
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Holding is like Josh Stones, young and full of confidence, maybe a little too much confidence. He is calm and has good technique, but Mustafi has much more experience playing in the top European football leagues than him.
He should learn from Mertesacker, Mustafi, Gabriel and Koscielny first, for one or two more seasons, before he is ready for the first team.
He is ready from the first time he joinned arsenal.
Who knows, Maybe Mustafi will improve next season, but In the meantime he looks like a BIG waste of money when compared to Holdings fee. That £35-40 million could have got us a decent striker last summer ( Mbappe for sure but even his fee is double that figure now)
He has goooooooood potential. He should play domestic cup games and league home games against relatively easier oppositions to make him grow further. Not playing him regularly will undermine his growth
OT
I Remember the last time when we were Hoping for West Ham to do us a favour against Liverpool, that was back in the George Graham days and it was the second from last game of the season, yup, Liverpool ended up winning 5-0… And we were left with the mission of having to beat the Scouser’s by two clear goals to win the league, at Anfield.
Looking at the today’s lineups, Liverpool’s team looks a lot stronger then West Hams ?? but the stats state that West Ham are unbeaten in their last 5 games against Liverpool ( home & away)
Come on West Ham, don’t leave us relying on Middlesbrough on the final day of the season.
West Ham are underpowered. theyll need a set piece goal or something from Lanzini now that they’re behind.
West Ham don’t seem up for it.
To think Wenger wanted to be tight and stingy for not wanting a CB before Liverpool game 1st day of the season. That is gonna come back to bite him.
It just has, Liverpool 1 up. And that game will be the end of our CL
Good
We don’t deserve to be there anyway.
Arsenal have been terrible.
The Europa is a disaster though – we don’t need it.
A clear run at the PL and champions league in 2019.
This season has been a disaster…
The problem with leaving the UCL is that coming back can be quite difficult as Liverpool and Man utd have come to realise. I hope West ham comes through for us we need a miracle.
Then at least we can say that it was deserved and not dependent upon the results of other teams.
And more importantly Wenger does not get off the hook as he will if we qualify.
Looks like you are gonna get your wish…
Best way.
Sometimes you have to go backwards to go forwards.
Liverpool deserve it more than us.
Had we qualified it will be everything from the previous 13 years repeated once again – now there is pressure for him to leave or at least for significant change at the club.
It cannot go on like this with that idiot dictating every aspect of how the club is run – f**k me he is an employee not the owner as he seems to think he is.
I just hope he decides to leave – his day was a long time ago..
He won’t leave though, so this is just more of Arsenal continuing to rot. If he leaves, then we’d be talking about a whole different story.
Then let them rot.
What do you think the American will do when attendances go from 60000 to 40000 or 35000 and they have the huge wage bill to pay.
If the club has chosen to ignore the fans then that so called “minority” will become bigger – people don’t want to spend money on a poor product and Arsenal are a poor product. You will see if there are no major changes how quickly attendances will fall…
I don’t get why people think Wenger leaving or staying is dependent on if we finish 4th or not. 4th or 5th Wenger was going to be staying anyway. So being happy we didn’t finish 4th doesn’t make sense. The reason Wenger never revealed his plans is because saying that he was staying would have put supporters of the club in a frenzy since most are calling for change. This would have made it harder for the team to play well and made Wengers remaining games of the season even less comfortable than they have been. I for one am bummed that Liverpool beat West Ham and I hate te idea of finishing below 4th. If you thought we had a bad season think how much worse it will be when we have to play on Thursdays in the Europa. We will be like how Tottenham used to be.
He will play young players, so that if we lose no one will criticisize him. I think if Liverpool go in UCl qualifying they will also join us in the Europa, if they face of against a half decent team in the play off.
Possible but unlikely. In my opinion UCL should only include champions and runners up…number 3s and 4s like us just waste our time on this competition.
1. Holding is still a young man so needs to be rotated to avoid the type of injuries we’ve seen from overplayed young players.
2. He is not a leader whereas Mustafi is very aggressive and vocal in organising others.
3. Mustafi is quite good at bringing the ball out of defence.
4. I love Holding but he was beaten for pace on the outside a couple of times yesterday and allowed a cross to go in.
Verdict: play him as part of a good rotating defence in which all players have strengths and weaknesses but he has fabulous potential.
West Ham can still do it. If they put any meaningful pressure on Liverpool they will crack, almost did from only one corner.
Sign up Lukaku,Mahrez and Isco…then van dijk and a left wing back…then the team is good.
Simeone or Allegri as coach
What about Messi and Neymar as well?
You are looking at £200 million – can you see him spending £200 million?
I cannot see him spending £50 million…
And besides tactical skill wins far more points than throwing money at a problem – and we know how tactically inept he is..
indeed it’s europa for us next season
West Ham were just standing around to let the second goal in, no closing down or anyrthing
who cares. West Ham owes us nothing! They are safe and had nothing to fight for.
Just like Stoke owed Liverpool nothing
Yeah lets slate to have west ham for not closing liverpool down…we should’ve been more pissed off with our boys..when they did nothing but stand around during the tottenham west brom and chelsea games
You know when wenger was penny pinching about bringing in a CB and ended up paying over the odds for mustafi well that’s just cost him over 85m
Its over. No top 4 for us this season.
West ham have failed us! I guess its europa next season..Wengerout!?
Nobody failed you mate…Arsenal as a club failed themselves.
moral Lesson: Do not put your hope on another man especially when you have also been given the opportunity to make hays while the sun shine
Goodbye champs league
Goodbye alexis
Goodbye ox
Hello europa
More trash from theo and gibbs
Should’ve been 2-1, refereeing really needs sorting out at this level of the game, all games Man City, ours and this one has had sub standard refereeing, that in Man City and WEst ham game has decided the match.
No our sh#% season has been the decisive thing this season
Not saying it hasn’t, but cr@p refereeing doesn’t help, especially when it should be so easy for a referee to be informed of what’s actually happened, like the rest of the world is.
We lost we blamed ref WH lost we also blamed ref omg wenger cancer is spearing.
I am NOT blaming the ref for our position, I am making a general comment that the poor standard of refereeing in the PL, even more evident this weekend in all the major games is not good for the game. There is no excuse, as the correct outcome could be immediately relayed to the ref, and it ruins the game. Just to put that to bed – I am not blaming refs for our current position, that is generally our fault, from poor organisation in player recruitment / contracts to team selection and organisation.
Blame the ref.
You sound like Wenger himself.
The club needs to take responsibility..
It HAS to cancel the contract offer because if it doesn’t forget about every season that fool is in charge for..
Hilarious. Maybe some deluded Wenger supporters will realise how low this club is sinking now. We were relying on flipping West Ham to get us into Champions League! Sounds nothing like a top club at all. All if fair though, because we’ve been so bad this season and don’t deserve to be in the competition. Europa League is our level now, even Spurs are leaving us in the dust. Nothing will change at Arsenal though and the sinking ship will continue to sink. Just have to wait it out until Dictator Wenger calls it quits.
Maybe West Ham have done us a bigger favour … supplied that catalyst for change …
Catalyst for change?
You believe that?
There will be NO change – he will sign a new deal for five years and it will be business as it has always been.
That is to say same tactics, same back room yes men, no intervention or pressure from the “board” and investment in players that neither address the problems or are of the required quality.
At least in Man United they have a manager who will buy in the right players with a board of directors who want to win things – far more than Arsenal have got…
Not really … Man Utd owners also want to milk the club for all that they can, although they have realised that they need to invest as well. As I’ve said before, we should follow the German FA’s example and make it a rule that fans own 51% of the shares, then this behaviour couldn’t happen. The touble is the FA are gutless, and just turn a blind eye.
And Kroenke is in it for the glory…
The board may be money grabbing, but they’re not thick. You don’t kill the golden goose. It’s obvious to anyone that Wenger needs to be slowly transitioned, you can’t do that immediately as he has too many hooks throughout the club. The first step will be bringing in a technical director and replacement of back room staff. Wenger is obviously not going along with that, as he sees it as being managed out, but he must realise he can’t go on for ever and his position will be weakened with lack of success. Apart from other things one of the key failures has been around dithering on contracts, dithering on bringing players in and dithering on being properly organised in both these areas.
That can be resolved by bringing in a technical director and back room staff
Gullible to think Wenger will leave just because we finished 5th. What catalyst are you actually talking about?
Now you’re gonna feel even more pissed when we are slipping further down the table next season because of Thursday night football and even more pissed when you still see Wenger on the side line struggling to zip up his puffer coat. Now Wenger will be blaming Thursday night football on why we drop prem points on the weekend.
They will want Wenger to stay even if we get relegated????
Middlesbrough can still do it for us !!! Otherwise the junkies had better start stacking up on the cans of soup coz it’s a difficult summer ahead
Lol that’s Typical of West Ham and it wouldn’t surprise me if they end up losing this one 5 nil as well.
Hey, there’s still Middlesbrough, they will come to the rescue, Chambers will save us with a clean sheet performance… I hope ??
And City could still fork up too, it’s not over yet!
The Wenger trophy is a big part of our GroundHog tradition, I would be very surprised if we don’t finish 4th.
That would be a real surprise. Might need someone in the kitchen to do their work like they did on Tottenham almost a decade ago.
I want Liverpool to beat Boro. We don’t deserve UCL.
Liverpool will destroy Middlesbrough so you’ll definitely get your wish. Middlesbrough won’t be able to handle Liverpool. West Ham was our best chance. Then again stranger things have happened. If Newcastle could destroy tottenham last season anything can happen this season.
I hope Liverpool some how do the improbable and flop. I don’t fancy Europa league football on Thursday nights.
Considering the fact that Wenger will be manager next season anyway why would any smart person want Arsenal to fail if they support the club? Keeping Sanchez would be hard enough as it is, it would be impossible if we couldn’t even offer him champions league football next season.
Europa League > UCL atleast we have a chance of going past Round of 16???
West Ham just didn’t turn up, other than it being last home game of season for them, there really isn’t any reason for them to do so.
I can already hear it. Wenger will sign the contract and say, ‘we can’t sign top quality because we don’t have UCL.’
I wonder what the atmosphere will be like when the players and manager parade round the stadium on last match day.
The only way Kroenke will fire Wenger is if we keep finishing outside of top 4 for the next 2 more seasons. He will be fed up with missing out on UCL money.
You could get rid of both of them with form like that. Value of Arsenal will go down, and there will be no uncertainty of it going up, so he might decide to sell. ALthough you also might be right, Fire Wenger and see if a new manager will improve valuation if not then he will sell.
They are both ruining Arsenal. I hope Wenger goes then Kroenke too
How to get rid of Wenger?
1. Do not buy any Arsenal merchandise.
2. Do not buy season tickets.
3. Finish outside top 4.
Lack of merch sales, empty stadium and
no UCL money will trigger Kroenke.
Arsenal have been celebrating 4th place trophy since the last season in Highbury?
Well done Pool. Well done Hammers. Arsene and Arsenal have to learn to do themselves a favour by putting in consistent positive performances. Where were they when we were getting trumped by mid and bottom-table teams sometime back. We are sick of perrenial inconsistency which is papered over by a late push for top four.
The coach and the players deserve this s***t, not the fans.
Yes man we dropped points against terrible teams like Hull, West Brom, Boro, Bournemouth, Crystal Palce, Burnley.
Look at Chelsea and Tottenham they beat all lower teams and took points agains top teams despite losing few games early.
Didn’t realise WHU were missing so many key players … Kouyate, Noble and Carroll .. any one of these would’ve dented their chances, but all 3? Not only that but the scousers had Lallana back again … feared the worst when I saw their team sheet.
To be honest Liverpool deserve it more than us. We have 9 defeats, thats around quarter of the league games. Liverpool on the other hand have unbeaten record against the top 7 teams. They got the most out of their 6 pointers.
Look at it this way. If we beat Liverpool on first day of the season, we would’ve been in the driving seat for top 4.
They’ve had their wobbles as well, but usually for more defined reasons, players not turning up through injury, unlike ours where players just don’t turn up, and were invisible for the match.
Wenger should have realised how hard it was to finish top four when Klop and Pep came to EPL but he was sturbon and didn’t invest accordingly. We were beaten by all the teams above us by at least once.
We had the players to win the league, this has been caused for other reasons.