There has been a never-ending debate about how bad our defenders have been this season and we are all aware of the deficiencies. The fact is that Laurent Koscielny (32 years old with ongoing achilles problems); Per Mertesacker (33 and in his last year of competitive football); Nacho Monreal (the youngster at 31, but although he seems to be our most consistent and effective defender he is also getting on in years) and the youngster (comparatively) Shkrodan Mustafi, who has looked well out of his depth for most of this season.
So we are are in urgent need of rebuilding at the back, but suddenly after the game against Man united, we have seen that Calum Chambers and Dino Mavropanos could actually be good enough to make the grade, and today we have been told that Rob Holding, who if you remember is only 22, has signed a new long term contract with the Gunners.
Arsenal.com reported it thus…
The 22-year-old defender joined us from Bolton Wanderers in July 2016 and made his debut against Liverpool in the opening match of the 2016/17 season.
He has since gone on to make 42 first-team appearances and helped the team win the Emirates FA Cup against Chelsea at Wembley Stadium last year.
Rob has five England Under-21 caps and was part of the squad that reached the semi-finals of the 2017 Uefa European Under-21 Championship in Poland.
We would like to congratulate Rob on his new contract and look forward to his continued contribution in the coming years.
So we now have three younger defenders ready to join Mustafi as our four needed centre-backs for the future. Admittedly Shkrodan and Dino are both very young for defenders, but they have both proven they can perform at the top level.
So we suddenly find we have no need to bring in another defender for the forseeable future? Or should we just expect the youngsters to be squad players and bring in one more experienced centre-back?
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