There often comes a time when it’s right for a player to move on from a club, and Hector Bellerin may have reached that point with Arsenal.
He moved to the club as a kid after spending some time at Barcelona, and we’ve seen in the past with players like Gerard Pique and Cesc Fabregas that there is often a desire to return to the Nou Camp eventually.
ESPN have indicated that Bellerin does want to leave in the summer due to interest from Barca, and Arsenal are likely to allow it to happen as long as a decent offer comes in.
They go on to suggest that there was some interest last summer, but an agreement was struck where they would let him go this summer if he agreed to stay for one more season in return.
He did end up staying and it’s been pleasing to see that injuries haven’t been such a big issue for him this year, and Barca do need a right back so the timing is perfect for him to move back home.
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It’s also thought that this is the best time to cash in on him because he only has two years left on his contract, so his value will start to decline if he stays another year without signing an extension.
He’s one of those players who may not be the first name on the team sheet and he might not be thought of as a major star at The Emirates, but he’s a good player and they will miss him if he moves on.
A potential price tag of £30m has been suggested so that would allow them to sign a replacement and still have something left over to put towards other areas of the squad, so a mutual parting of the ways could suit both parties this summer.
Arsenal fans always need to blame someone when Arsenal doesn’t win the title. Instead of measuring the club by its coaches, at Arsenal we measure by who to blame for the club not winning the title. At Arsenal there are actually scapegoat eras. In recent times, we’ve had the Giroud era, the Ozil Era, the Mustafi Era, and now, the Bellerin Era.
For a long time there was the Wenger Era, but that has fizzled now that both men to succeed him have performed worse despite having more money to spend and infinitely more support than Wenger got in his last decade. Of course ,there are plenty of idiots and morons (Martin Keown and Paul Merson please take bows) who point to the current state of affairs and blame Wenger anyway, saying he left the team in such a shambles that finishing wit the worst record in the last twenty five years was inevitable. Which seems hard to swallow seeing Wenger, in his worst year was better than Arteta’s supposedly improving year. Hmmm….
Maybe the time to blame individual players is past? Maybe it’s time to blame the front office for not having a clue as to how to manage the players. Maybe it’s time to accept that while Mikel Arteta is a good coach and a good man and a loyal Arsenal player, he is a young manager with a lot to learn.
Player for player, Arsenal are a better side than Leicester, but are 15 points lower in the table. Bellerin is one of the best right backs in the league. He is not yet back to his best following a catastrophic knee injury. Spors medicine experts and psychologists will say that it takes two years to reach pre-injury levels with that type of injury because first the injury has to heal fully, and then the player’s confidence in his body has to return.
Even so, watching Bellerin it is impossible to conclude he is anything but a huge asset. He provides more than Tierney in terms of chances, but all anyone can say is Tierney is a great crosser of the ball. If that’s true, why don’t Arsenal, who have great aerial threats in Lacazette and Aubameyang, score more headed goals? Perhaps because Tierney, while a fine player who is improving rapidly, is not actually the second coming of Ashley Cole (yet).
Arsenal have tried to improve defensively. They signed Saliba, who cannot get on the field and is out on loan. They signed Gabriel, anointed after two games as the heir to Tony Adams, they signed Chelsea defender David Luiz, who has been good, Pablo Mari, who seems destined to be the second coming of… well, no one. Rob Holding has been Arsenal’s best and most consistent defender this season, yet he was on his way out according to the fans and pundits (and good riddance!).
All that money, all those players, and they still haven’t come close to the often maligned BFG (too slow) and Koscielny (too rash). You have to think that Kos is laughing his ass off as he reads his morning paper and eats his morning croissant.
If only Arsenal could get rid of Ozil, everything would change. Except Ozil did not play a single minute in this season, where Arsenal lie eleventh and frequently look like a better bet to slide down the table than to move up. Arsenal fans seem to be reveling in the fact that Ozil has supposedly looked lackluster in his four games at second-place Fennerbace. I have not seen him play (who has? No one, so how they know he was lackluster is beyond me). Still, Ozil is in 2nd and Arsenal 11th. Maybe it wasn’t actually his fault.
Maybe Arsenal current predicament is down to a combination of poor man management, naive coaching, inexperience, and not playing the best players? Maybe, despite spending on a new holding midfielder, bringing in a pale shadow of Ozil to create, and a replacement right back who is half Bellerin’s quality and half his size, in Cedric Soares, Arsenal are under performing as a team, across the board, because this is not a team at all, but a collection of mismatched, albeit talented players who have no idea who to play together and they are led by a coach in his first full season as a first team coach?
Or maybe it is just all Hector Bellerin’s fault?