One player who has surprised me recently in a not so good way is Calum Chambers. The former Southampton man has looked a bit off the pace in some recent performances and a part of me is beginning to feel like perhaps I assessed the player too soon.

He isn’t playing particularly poorly (aside from that Swansea shocker) but he has definitely lost the stride he had in his first few matches at the club. He joined from Southampton a virtual unknown and all of a sudden looked a rock solid Arsenal defender. Rock solid may a bit of an exaggeration, but his displays were noteworthy.

The 3-0 win over Man City in the Community Shield comes to mind in particular. Such composure and intelligence from a man who barely featured for the Saints last year, and it looked like Arsenal had a real coup.

That started to fade though, and the less then stellar performances began appearing. He is still having nightmares about Jefferson Montero, while everything that even resembles the color yellow will induce migraines as well. Chambers has been booked 6 times already in just 12 league appearances, 2 of which contributed to his red against Stoke City at the weekend.

6 yellows and 1 red in 12 appearances is a shocking amount to have collected and a lot of it is down to Chamber’s tendency to dive in rashly.He gets caught out more often than not and either ends up arriving late or finds himself chasing the player and opting to pull him back. Chambers’ positioning has also been a bit erratic lately, i.e Stoke’s first two goals.

Crouch’s goal came from a simple enough ball in the box but yet Chambers found himself back pedaling. I still think Mertesacker was in no man’s land, but Chambers should have done better as well. Bojan’s goal was perhaps worse as he was unaccounted for all together. Chambers was guilty of ball watching as Bojan ghosted into the area unmarked.

The third was calamitous defending from a set piece on the part of the entire team, so Chambers gets a slight reprieve. He looked a bit nervy against his old club last week also, as well as against West Brom, but narrow victories for Arsenal perhaps overshadowed any individual performances.

One could be forgiven for forgetting the player is only 19, as he has rocketed up the footballing spectrum. As such his play will come under much more intense scrutiny naturally, so do keep that in mind. Nonetheless, Chambers will have to continue to prove himself, and we gooners must perhaps take a step back for a while from judgement.

Let’s revisit this later when Chambers has had more experience and more time to sink or swim. Hopefully the latter.

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