Arsenal: Rob Holding Can Definitely Handle The Pressure
Arsenal great Martin Keown has questioned the pressure-handling abilities of Rob Holding, but it’s fair to say no questions need be asked.
Arsenal has seen Lucas Perez and Shkodran Mustafi fall under criticism this week, so why not round it all off with Rob Holding? Not really. Martin Keown wasn’t criticizing Rob Holding in his recent interview with FourFourTwo, he was merely questioning him. But even then, I find that no questions needing to be asked.
“I just feel that when you’re a central defender in that position, it’s like goalkeepers – do we play young goalkeepers, do we play young central defenders? As soon as it goes wrong there’s suddenly a lot of pressure being put on those individuals,” he said, after praising the acquisition itself.
It’s a fair point by Keown. Holding is young and young players can struggle to acclimate.
However, while they say not to judge anything by one occurrence, I would like to do that right now as I think this is an exception to that rule.
Holding was acquired from Championship side Bolton who tumbled off into the third tier of English football. He may have been their player of the year, but there were naturally some skeptics when Wenger brought him to North London. Along with the skepticism, there was undoubtedly pressure on the young Englishman.
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To make matters even more pressurized, he was thrown into the fray to start on opening day against Liverpool with Calum Chambers next to him. This is pressure incarnate. The pressure gnawed away at Chambers and chased him all the way to Boro, but Holding held strong. He took that opening day loss in stride and came back against Leicester and delivered a solid performance.
I rarely judge based on such a small sample size as this. But think about the pressure that Holding overcame in the span of a week. He may not have Champions League experience or anything like that, but having to stare down Liverpool on opening day at the Emirates next to Calum Chambers is a completely different kind of pressure and he handled it wonderfully.
So much so that if Wenger wants to start Holding in the Champions League, I’m all for it (that being said, I don’t see why he would need to).
Holding can handle pressure. He is a calm, cool customer and if he is already displaying that at the age of 20, you can bet that it will only improve. No ‘moment gone wrong’ is going to derail his psyche, because if that’s how it works, then the Liverpool match should have served that purpose. And it didn’t.
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