Arsenal: Calum Chambers Loan Useless Without Improvement
Middlesborough manager Aitor Karanka has stated that Calum Chambers will return to Arsenal as a better player. If he does not, the loan move was useless.
The loan system has been a tactic that Arsene Wenger has exploited to great effect throughout his tenure at Arsenal. Jack Wilshere, Aaron Ramsey and Francis Coquelin have all benefited greatly from various loan deals, especially earlier in their career, and once again, Wenger is looking to utilise the temporary departure as a way to provide much-needed game time and much wanted development to some of his talented youngsters.
Jack Wilshere is once again out on loan, this time for the season and at South Coast club Bournemouth in a quest to finally enjoy a full season of regular football and rejuvenate a career that was suffocating at the hands of a host of debilitating injuries.
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Another young England and Arsenal hopeful who left the Emirates on transfer deadline day on a season-long loan deal to another Premier League club was Calum Chambers. Having seen Rob Holding, the new young centre-half who Wenger has taken a liking to having only signed him earlier in the summer, usurp in the squad, Chambers’ role within the squad was coming under question.
He was no longer the talented youngster, the man seen as the future of the defence and also lost his place as the first reserve behind the likes of Per Mertesacker, Gabriel Paulista and Laurent Koscielny. Consequently, Wenger saw it fit to find a club to send him out on loan to aid his development and progression with a much higher likelihood of regular starts.
Middlesborough would be Chambers’ destination, and his new manager Aitor Karanka has stated that he fully intends to return the young centre-half a better player than the one who arrives:
“He has come here to help us. I brought him here to help him because, at the end of the season, the main thing is that we can stay in the Premier League and Calum can go back to Arsenal as a better player. Calum ticks all the boxes – he can play in different positions, he’s a really good player, he’s a good kid, so he was really important for us at the last moment and for sure he is going to be important at this club.”
While it is comforting to read that Chambers’ manager seems willing to play him with an intention of developing him, it would be a disappointment if this loan deal did not result in improvement. Ultimately, the whole point of loaning out a young player is purely with the intention of furthering his progression. It would be useless if that did not occur.
Karanka’s comments are relieving, they should come as an inherent result of the very character of the deal: a loan. Arsenal want and expect a return in Chambers’ time spent away from the club. Without it, what is the point in sending him in the first place?