Arsenal looked to benefit from Arsene Wenger’s ‘English Core’ initiative, but it didn’t really work. Now, phase two is under way with Rob Holding.
Let’s be honest, Arsenal‘s first English core didn’t work out. Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott, the Ox? They’re all dying on a vine. Carl Jenkinson was also in that group, but he can’t stay healthy and the odds of him overtaking Hector Bellerin are slim to none.
Danny Welbeck can still amount to something, but he needs to stay healthy and if he never becomes the striker he was supposed to be, his work ethic and athletic ability is always going to be overshadowed by his inability to fill the role he was meant to fill.
Kieran Gibbs is wholly irrelevant, despite whatever abilities he has (and he is quite talented). The only real hope is Wilshere coming back healthy or the Ox finally capitalizing on his massive heap of potential. Chambers still has hope to, but like Wilshere, it all depends on his loan.
In the mean time, we might as well start looking at a potentially new English core. Arsenal will always have guys coming up in their system that can slot into an ‘English Core’ and sure enough, we have some already. Daniel Crowley, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Chuba Akpom (if he stays with England and doesn’t switch to Nigeria) and Chris Willock all look promising enough to get excited about. You could even add Tafari Moore in there with how well he’s been doing lately and how soon his chance may come.
We saw plenty of Willock in preseason and seeing as how Crowley is going to be ‘the next Jack Wilshere’ we can always hope that he can be the heart of that new core.
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But in terms of who is the figurehead of this new English core that I am haphazardly throwing together on a whim just so we can stop talking about the old English core, it has to be Rob Holding.
Sure, he’s only recently arrived at Arsenal, but already he has made it clear that the English National team was foolish to put their eggs in Calum Chambers basket as the ‘future of the National defense’. Rob Holding is the real deal and I would not be surprised to see him either next to John Stones or completing replacing him.
Holding is a fantastic young Englishman to set as the pillar of a new English core and if even one or two of the young Englishmen mentioned can turn their potential into a Premier League quality product, then you’ve got three people already. Filling in the gaps from there should be easy for Wenger.
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