Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain can take a big career step at Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool now he's rid of hands-off Arsene Wenger

England midfielder's development has stymied under Wenger, but Klopp's proven track record suggests he can bring the best out yet another player yet to fulfil their potential

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain made his Arsenal debut on 28 August 2011, one of the worst days in the club’s modern history. The team, shorn of its top players, made up of youngsters, lost 8-2 to Manchester United. It was their third game of a season they were dreadfully unprepared for.

Six years on, Oxlade-Chamberlain played his last game for Arsenal on 27 August this year, the third game of another season for which Arsenal have shown up unready. The top players have not left yet, but they may, and Arsenal teams are still being steamrollered by their stronger, hungrier, cannier rivals.

It is easy enough to ask what has changed at Arsenal over the last six years, whether there has been any progress, and whether Arsene Wenger has justified staying in the role he has occupied since 1996. But what of Oxlade-Chamberlain himself? How different a player is he now than when he first arrived from Southampton? How much better? How much clearer in his sense of what type of player he is meant to be?

Oxlade-Chamberlain has just turned 24 and for most players the early 20s are when regular senior football turns them from a prospect to someone who can be counted on. And yet for Oxlade-Chamberlain that process has not happened. He arrived as a wide player who wanted to play in midfield but for all of Wenger’s professed support he has never made that role his own.

In the first three games of this season, and at the end of the last one, Oxlade-Chamberlain was playing at wing-back in Wenger’s new 3-4-2-1 system. He was not trusted to play in central midfield or backed to play in the creative roles, so he was shunted from left to right to fill in.

Given Arsenal’s struggles in midfield over the last few seasons, it does not say much for Oxlade-Chamberlain that he has failed to make any of those roles his own. He is still, at 24, a player who relies on his speed and power rather than great reading of the game. He should be dangerous in the final third but has only scored nine goals for Arsenal.

Wenger himself grew frustrated with Oxlade-Chamberlain’s lack of development and Arsenal were open to offers for him since half-way through last season. They would have sold him last summer if only the player wanted to go.

But ultimately whose responsibility is it that Oxlade-Chamberlain’s development has stalled? Wenger is the coach at Arsenal and his job is to provide the education and instruction to turn talents into players. And Oxlade-Chamberlain is not the only one whose development has stalled: Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott and Calum Chambers have all found that they have not become the players they were hoping to be.

There is a theory in the game that Wenger’s hands-off coaching is more about creating the right environment than giving the right instructions, more about cultural development than individual development. That is why the senior established players, Alexis Sanchez and Santi Cazorla, have performed so well in the last few years, but the younger players have floundered for direction.

Oxlade-Chamberlain put pen to paper on a five-year deal (Twitter/@LFC)

It is not too much of a leap to say that any of Oxlade-Chamberlain’s generation of Arsenal players might have done better in the last five years at a different club, with a different coach. And now, at Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool, he will get a chance to prove it.

Klopp is a coach committed to individual development. He has a far more prescriptive template for how he wants football played, and he drills it into the players on the training ground. He has a recent, proven track record in improving young players, not least in his great Borussia Dortmund side that won consecutive Bundesliga titles.


 The 24-year-old had been deployed at wing-back for Arsenal 
 (Getty)

Even at Liverpool he has dramatically improved the squad, and built a title-challenging side out of players over whom there had been questions. There were some doubts over Jordan Henderson and Adam Lallana when they arrived at Liverpool, from Sunderland and Southampton respectively, but the pair are now crucially important to how Klopp wants to play. Henderson’s intensity sets the tempo in midfield while Lallana combines technical precision with winning the ball back high up the pitch. Throw in Emre Can and Georginio Wijnaldum and it is midfield built on Klopp’s improvements.

Given Oxlade-Chamberlain’s obvious gifts he should be perfect for Klopp’s aggressive style of football. He just needs to be taught it. At 24 he is still young enough to learn: Lallana was 27 and Henderson 25 when Klopp arrived at Anfield and they have rapidly improved already. Oxlade-Chamberlain has not made that big career step yet, but now he has the right coach and a big chance.