Ben White has enjoyed a successful debut season with Arsenal but scroll back to the first weekend of the season and the centre back was picked out on Sky Sports for criticism
Image: Eddie Keogh – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
As far as starting a new career-chapter goes, Ben White could hardly have fared worse.
After a 2-0 defeat at Brentford, here is how Gary Neville saw the £50million defender’s Arsenal future panning out. “If you are playing against Arsenal next week, you’ll be thinking: ‘We’ll stick it on him (White), we’ll put it up against him, we’ll put our big man on him … he will be a target.”
And Jamie Carragher weighed in: “He was linked with Liverpool for 12-18 months and my fear was I wouldn’t want him to come to Liverpool because he is not tall enough, not good enough in the air.” Seven months later, White is one of the Premier League ’s in-form centre-halves – one of the FEW in-form English centre-halves – and part of Gareth Southgate’s plans in World Cup year.
And White, obviously hurt by the public criticism so early in his Emirates days, admits Neville and Carragher spurred him on. He explains: “I think it was the first time I have actually been singled out. It is not a nice feeling, it is not very good.
“But it just gave me more incentive to go out there and do well. Some of the stuff they said was true in that game – it wasn’t my best. But if I thought about it too much or kept listening to it back all the time, it would only affect me. So I just tried to do better.”
White, 24, has certainly done that. He has looked a polished operator but credits a season with Newport County in League Two for helping turn him into an elite player. White says: “It was one of the best years of my life. I’d gone from playing in an academy where everything is nice and you have everything you want and then you go there and everything is completely different.
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“You’re having a curry for your pre-match meal and in my first game, there was a punch-up at half-time … between our own players in our own dressing-room. But when you go to play in those leagues, you see what you should be doing and probably stuff you shouldn’t be doing to get to the next level.”
White then proved himself on loan at Peterborough and Leeds before his big-money move from Brighton to Arsenal and, after that shaky beginning, he is a mainstay of Mikel Arteta’s side. “Getting called up shows what I am doing is really paying off,” says White. “I was at a new club and wanted to start off well but that didn’t happen. But I took it game by game, playing as well as I can for Arsenal.
“The last time I got called up I was straight into a tournament – so to come back in and be part of it again is a really nice feeling.” And with Harry Maguire and Tyrone Mings both under scrutiny for their Premier League form, there is a possible opening for the confident White.
But he says: “Look at what they did last summer, how amazing they were. Form is temporary. The way they trained when I was here for the Euros was something that I aim to try and be like.”
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