Rob Holding has started Arsenal’s last few matches, with William Saliba out because of injury.
The Englishman was out of favour for a long time as Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes formed a solid defensive partnership at the heart of the Arsenal defence.
The ex-Bolton man is one of the longest-serving members of the current Arsenal squad and is struggling to impress.
However, he is preferred to Jakub Kiwior, who moved to the Emirates in the last transfer window.
In the absence of Saliba, Holding has been given the chance to prove his worth, but the defender is struggling and has now been described as the main weakness at Arsenal by pundit John Giles.
He told Off The Ball:
“When it comes to these crunch matches I think that the weaknesses show up. Xhaka is a weakness, Gabriel is a weakness and the other lad at centre-half, Holding, is a definite weakness.
“You have Holding and I know he’s not in the team when everyone is fit, but he’s a definite weakness, he’s a big weakness.”
Just Arsenal Opinion
Most fans recognise Holding as not being good enough, but at the moment, we have no other defender who can fill in for the injured Saliba.
Sadly, the Englishman cannot stop us from missing Saliba and we hope the Frenchman returns soon.
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Whilst I agree that Holding isn’t a first choice player, it disturbs me that several days following a disappointing end to the City game, he is still being trotted out as a failure. Unless he has the skin of a rhinoceros Holding will suffer from this type of analysis
Funny this is that in the second half Gabriel really struggled with Halaand. Halaand is a beast you can only cut his supply as its difficult to man mark him. In the second half when he switched roles with Gabriel he was clearly the best Arsenal player.
Cut Holding some slack; the player was meant to be a spare only and not a regular starter.
To me, the bigger problem from above was failure to provide adequate midfield cover (or protection) for the defender, especially against City.
Arteta carries the can for this error; give Holding a break!
In hindsight, it was costly mistake too spending 25M on Kiwior instead of a premier-league-ready defender.
Not even going to mention the 35M wasted on lightweight Vieira. (Just two transfers that could have tipped the scales in our favor – this season – if we were smarter in the transfer market). Will we ever learn?
Let’s just end the misery with transfers and hire new people who know the business. We could start by hiring the entire transfer team at Brighton. They seem to know a thing or two about finding gems in the transfer market.
Best analysis I’ve read so far. U hit this spot-on.
I don’t want to blame the players, we had a good transfer window to dot the i’s, I stead we went to kiwior and Vieira, and now everyone wants to put the blame on holding, who’s just a squad player.
Other teams identify what they want and go for it.
The midfield didn’t cover the defence at all, when you know your defence is an issue, then do a Mourinho, park the bus, afterall, we didn’t get a single shot on target in the first half, so what are the players doing up front???
Cheers, Kayode.
Oh my, when will the witch hunt cease, pundits and fans alike want blood, poor Holding may not have enough blood to quench this blood thirst.
The issue is not all about holding, if holding is not performing well why can’t you play white there and play tinny at the right back. Must you drive one dimension?
Holding is an obvious weakness. However, he is not the only one.
The midfield has not worked as well as it should. In transition our midfielders have lacked speed and athleticism. This has been compounded by individual errors which have allowed attackers to run at the defence
Holding is not the problem but a manager who is so blind that he can’t set up his team according to the players available to him, a holding will never be able to play like saliba he lacks the pace and game reading of saliba then why expose him by not playing to the strength of your team available to you, doing same thing and expecting the different result
Let’s continue this madness and kick start Chelsea season
@ GD
I am as frustrated as you in MA’s team selection.
It needed a double pivot against Man City and the whole load was on Partey and he was not up to this task.
No protection using OZ as left back. Xhaka venturing forward instead of game reading with Partey.
Team selection and tactics and not having a plan B were what has let us down. So much so that my frustration leads to the fact that if he picks the same team against Chelsea I am not watching the game even if we were to go onto winning it convincingly.
I believe you should match citizens’ formation when playing them so you can effectively go man-to-man when facing them
This Holding scapegoating is getting stupid. Let me just say, Saliba is a better player BUT Holding made no more errors than Saliba may have done and no more errors than ANYONE else. The big problem was Arteta chose to play him just as he would Saliba but Holding is a totally different defender than Saliba anyway, so that doesn’t work. Arteta chose not to play 50 mil Center back and a possible back three. He chose not to stiffen up the defence in Salibas absence by leaving a better defender than the one playing (Zinchenko and Tierney) on the bench. The errors were not Holdings but the way we never changed tactics to compensate a player being out.