A lot has changed at Arsenal in less than six months. On the opening night of the season, a 2-0 defeat at Brentford contained all the scars of Old Arsenal: limp response to falling behind, bullied by a lesser opponent, profligate in the final third.
The start of the season always feels instructive beyond the individual result or performance, a chance to set the tone. Mikel Arteta was under immediate pressure.
A lot has changed for Ben White too. A £50m summer signing, White was particularly culpable on opening night. He struggled to cope with Brentford’s fluid front line and flailed at the long throw-in for the second goal.
After the game, Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville did not hold back with their criticism. Carragher was particularly damning: “I wouldn’t want him to come to Liverpool because he’s not tall enough, not good enough in the air.”
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On Wednesday, White was speaking to the media at St George’s Park having been recalled to the England squad for the first time since Euro 2020. That selection is proof of his improvement.
Nobody is talking about White’s price tag anymore, nor his height. Arsenal are the clear favourites to finish in the top four for the first time in six years. Having conceded nine times in their first three league games of the season, it’s only 22 in 25 since.
“I saw it [the criticism on Sky Sports] – I think it was the first time I’ve actually been singled out,” White says. “It’s never a nice feeling, but it just gives me more incentive to go out there and do well. I think you have to look at it and see what they’ve said and some of the stuff they said was true that game. It wasn’t my best – obviously they’ve had amazing careers and hopefully one day I could have something like that.
“To be honest I can’t remember what they said now. I think if I thought about it too much or kept listening to it back all the time it would only affect me so I think I’d rather just leave it and move on and try to do better. The start of the season was tough. I didn’t play very well and then I got Covid so I was out for another two games. It was hard to get started, it wasn’t the start I wanted but coming through the season now, I’m playing every week, the team is doing really well and it’s very positive from here.”
White has been revitalised into a rock within Arsenal’s defence alongside Gabriel Magalhaes and in front of Aaron Ramsdale. The doubts about his physical presence were rubbished by those who had watched him develop as a young player during loan spells and at Brighton, but the key lies in positioning and timing. Arteta always wanted his team to play out from the back; that was one of the keys to Arsenal’s pursuit of White, despite the high transfer fee.
He also appears to be a leader within Arsenal’s team. He is still young at 24, but when you have the youngest team in the Premier League by some distance, players are forced to act older than their years and there are often seven or eight players who are White’s junior in the team. The leadership element is, White believes, his weakest area. But his formative years are serving him well.
“No, I think that’s the thing that I have struggled with most through my career,” he says when asked if he is a leader on the pitch. “I think I have learnt from different teams I’ve played for and different players I’ve played with to try and get those different skills into my game. All the loan spells from League Two to Brighton and then Arsenal in the Premier League have all taught me different things.
“At Newport there was a player called [Mark] O’Brien. I actually took his place; I played throughout the season and he was always on the bench. But he was the best guy to have around and he helped me massively even though I had taken his place in the team.
“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. You’re having curry for your pre-match meal! Everything was totally different from what I knew in the academy. In my first game there was a punch-up at half-time, between our own players in our own dressing room. It was a bit scary to be fair. I didn’t want to make any mistakes, that’s for sure.”
And White knows about how setbacks can steel a player for the challenges that inevitably come when you are one of the most expensive defenders in your country’s history. He was released by Southampton at the age of 16 and admits that he wasn’t sure if he wanted to carry on in the game. More pertinently, he didn’t know if anyone would want him to carry on. He wasn’t tall, he was skinny and he says he couldn’t run properly. The Southampton exit was no shock, but he was struggling to make himself relevant.
“After Southampton, I went to Bristol Rovers on trial for three days,” he says. “I only did two of the days because we were literally just running up hills. We didn’t get a football out once; it absolutely killed me – I couldn’t do it. Then I got a trial at Leicester, went there, and they didn’t offer me anything either.
“Then I went to Brighton for a trial against Brentford – that was when I first started playing at centre-back – and they said after to my Mum ‘we need to know by Tuesday because we want to offer him a scholarship and if you don’t know by then, the contract’s gone.’ So it was kind of ‘I need to sign it because I don’t know if I’m going to get anything else.’”
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And it’s that attitude that keeps him level-headed now. No huge highs, no huge lows, just a young man who wants to rise to every challenge and a defender who has improved along every step of the way. And if your form falters, temporarily, so what?
“There are much bigger problems in the world,” White says. “As long as my family is safe and everybody around me is healthy, that is a much bigger issue than not playing so well at the weekend. I don’t need anyone to tell me that. I’m a big boy. I’ve had criticism all the way through. I’m sure I’ll get it again.”
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