Will Hector Bellerin sign a new contract?

By Walter Broeckx

The last 24 hours I have seen very different headlines being thrown around about young Hector.

Headlines saying that he has signed a new 4 year deal. Of course if that would be the case I would jump up, pumping my fists in joy. I think regular readers know that I have been singing his praise since… well must be a few years now.

I have seen him play in the youth Champions League in Dortmund 1.5 years ago. I even went there earlier just to see him play there. And for one hour I was looking in amazement on how he performed. He was for me (but I am biased on this I do admit) the most important player on the pitch. And he was playing right back! Not the position to get the headlines. Or draw a lot of attention. But I went to have a look at him and for once I had the feeling: hey this boy has something special that can turn him in to a really great player.

His style reminded me of Danni Alves from Barcelona. Quick, attacking, dribbling… he had it all. But as he was still young I couldn’t believe he would have been ready to take a first team spot already. But almost to the day one year later he stood there. Again in Dortmund but this time in the main stadium in front of the yellow wall.

Not the best starts to his career as we were dreadful and Hector surely was looking like a debutant. But I think there are not many places where making your first start in a competitive match will be that difficult. He drowned with the rest of the team a bit as we didn’t perform as we should and could. But Dortmund at home is a team that is difficult to beat and to resist.

But after that missed start he came back. And isn’t it amazing that now when we see the team sheet and Bellerin is our right back from the start we don’t even blink.  We even forget that he is still only 19 years young. But that will change next week. As when looking up a few things for this article I found out that he will turn 20. He is born on the same day as a person who is important to me, so now I will never forget his birthday. He was born on March 19, 1995 to put the record straight.

But back to his contract. If we can believe reports Bellerin his contract ends this summer. And today Wenger has said in his press conference that they are negotiating a new contract with Bellerin. I think everyone will say: yeah, offer him a good contract because he could turn in to a special player for us. Now already and in the future.

But seeing people write that he has already signed his new contract seems a bit premature. I wonder if some people have difficulty in reading English because even for me as a non native speaker I can understand the difference between : being offered a new contract and having signed a new contract.

As long as it isn’t on arsenal.com he hasn’t signed it for me.

But I sure hope he will sign it and that we will be able to see him grow and grow and grow. Of course he still has to learn a few things. But the pace at which he is picking things up is very encouraging. He himself said a few weeks ago that he wants to get a lot of feedback on his game and on what he is doing right but most of all on what he is doing wrong. Because the right things you do are more or less coming naturally. But the wrong things are the things you have to get rid off.

But he displays that learning attitude that Wenger likes to see in his players.  And so I hope he will sign his contract and continues to perform and to learn to even improve.

For a young player he also has a rather intelligent match feeling. At Old Trafford he got booked in the first minute almost and so for any player it is walking on thin ice after that. You can make a foul but have to be careful it is not a heavy or dirty foul. He did this in an excellent way. And it didn’t make him stop to help out in the attack or to join in the attacks. I thought it was a very mature display for a young lad with only a handful of starts in his first season with the big boys.

For those who love the numbers he made 15 starts now. 9 in the premier league, 3 in Europe, 2 in the FA cup and one in the League cup. Not bad for a 19 year old of course but then it is natural to understand that he still will be vulnerable to the odd mistake. I just hope the moaners will not get on his neck if that happens because it can kill a player at the start of his career if part of the fans get on his back.

For me I really hope that in the next week or so, who knows maybe on his birthday, the news will come out that he has signed a new deal with Arsenal. I have been hoping for him to come good from the moment he came from Barcelona and seeing his talent I knew he should make it.  And now I really would be very sad and dissapointed if he would leave us right now when his immense talent is being shown to the whole world.

Come on Hector, sign da thing! You must! don’t let me down…..

 

27 Replies to “Will Hector Bellerin sign a new contract?”

  1. Another Wenger masterstroke. He will become a very important player for us. He will prove them wrong who believe Arsene has lot it. When he brought Hector Bellerin and Jon Toral from Barca, nobody took notice. Now see what is happening. Classic Wenger’s Midas touch.

  2. Another Wenger masterstroke. He will become a very important player for us. He will prove them wrong who believe Arsene has lost it. When he brought Hector Bellerin and Jon Toral from Barca, nobody took notice. Now see what is happening. Classic Wenger’s Midas touch.

  3. Walter, I think you watched the game. Someone in a comment a few days ago, was writing about Bellerin. And how I interpretted the comment, is that Bellerin purposely fouled Young because the center of defense for Arsenal was preoccupied due to Fellianelbowi hitting Coquelin. Is this correct? Or did I read it wrong? If it is correct, that foul could have been an important one to take. Which also speaks well for him.

  4. in a weird way, the Dortmund game was great for him. Or rather his reaction to it was. I’d bet it is exceptionally rare for a young player to have as tough a day as that and then next time out show zero signs of self-doubt or nerves.

    Another hugely encouraging sign is how easily he slotted in at left back away at Galatasaraay. A poor team, admittedly, but still, I think the majority of experienced full backs would show signs of discomfort when switched to the opposite side, and he made it look easy.

    I’ll be mighty relieved when he signs up. Did Shaw- who fetched 30 mill- really look any better last year than Bellerin has this? He certainly hasn’t been better, or as good, this year.

    Aye, I’m a worrier (or when I see reports of Rojo being on nearly 200 grand a week, a panicker), and i think Utd for one would love this player, and offer him obscene wages. But…every sign suggests Bellerin is very happy here, and, more importantly, a good character.

    Confident he’ll sign up, and do great stuff for the team.

  5. Gord

    I read that also and thought “well you couldn’t make it up”. Except that you could, and he/she did.
    It was a ridiculous apologist attempt of an excuse for Bellerin’s yellow card tackle by saying that if Fellaine had been rightfully called for a foul on Coqueline, and play stopped, then the ball wouldn’t have been passed to Young so Hector needn’t have had to foul him to prevent a cross into the centre of our defence which had been “de-rythmed” or something like that. A sequence of events thing. You can apply that daft sort of logic to just about every situation that has ever happened since the beginning of time, but you only get to suffer it on UA.

  6. I was just reading commentary, but the tackle seemed out of character for Bellerin, and that was the only excuse I had read about.

    Thanks.

  7. Gord

    Maybe I’m being a bit uncharitable to the commenter. As you say it was out of character and Hector does seem a sweet young lad whose taken the chance offered by an unfortunate injury to Debuchey. Didn’t Ashley Cole break through under similar circumstances?

  8. Gord
    I wrote about the Bellerin tackle and booking. I was trying to point out how most refs, when ignoring assaults on Ars players, causes our other players a few moments of distraction. This sometimes leads to a mistimed tackle (or a ghost foul) from an Arsenal player. Here’s a section of my comment:

    “In the 4th minute of the game against Manu, Fellelbowy smashed Coq’s nose – leaving it bleeding. What interested me was the reaction of the Arsenal players that saw the incident.
    They stopped (at least 3 players) and had their hands spread wide, expecting a foul to be given. (I expected a red card – in my dreams).
    The point here is that the breaking of the Arsenal player’s rhythm extended beyond the 3 players I could see on that particular video frame.

    As Fellelbowy skipped away with the ball and then passed it, the Arsenal player’s closer to their own goal were momentarily de-rythmed (distracted) too. The result was that a ball played to Ashley diver spawned a mistimed tackle from Bellerin, for which he was booked.
    So within 15 seconds of that ref-ignored assault play continued until an Arsenal player made a foul which, conveniently, the free kick could be taken from a position whereby Utd could hoof the ball into the penalty area.
    Naturally, the bloody-nosed Coq was off the field of play, leaving one less defender to out jump our friend Fellelbowy.”

    I hadn’t thought about whether Bellerin had deliberately fouled Ashley Diver. I think the tackle was a bit panicky/dove into it, instead of staying on his feet and chasing down the attacker. Mind you, Young has been excellent at tricking people with his footwork, for years. A lesson learned, I’m sure. (And I’m not having a go at Hector. He’s a fabulous young player).

    If you google “manu v arsenal fa cup 2015 full match”, there’s a youtube file, 1:54:24 mins long and with non English commentary (great).

    I’d especially like to get Walters take on things.

  9. I thought Arsene Wenger sounded very confident when he was asked about Bellerin signing an extension to his contract. I don’t think he would do that unless it was pretty well a certainty.

  10. I see no reason why he would’nt, so i’m more concerned with Theo signing his new offer.

    Seems like deja-vu anyone?

  11. I am not sure I have ever gone off topic on an Untold article before, but I am today.

    This is the first article I have ever read on the internet without the aid of glasses.

    Oh and by the way, in relatiion to the comment above re WHL, the recent court case vis a vis Tottenham’s new stadium revealed a very interesting piece of info about the funding, and also seems to confirm that the stadium is under 60,000 not over 60,000 as some Tottenham supporters were suggesting after the last article.

  12. Tony: in the land of the blind referees you are now truly king. Think how much time you will save by not having to look for your glasses anymore.

    I think Rantetta’s comments are sound: not an excuse but an explanation and Foulaini could easily have walked for the assault, the indecent hast of which beggared belief. Let’s hope that Bellerin signs: I am sure he will and it will be fascinating to see how the club manages the Debuchy, Jenkinson, Chambers and Bellerin situation.

  13. A great prospect who should be a key player in our defence for years to come . Maybe he’s waiting to sign it on his 20th birthday ,and after we qualify for the next stage of the CL ?

  14. I’m pretty certain he’ll re-sign for us as he’ll appreciate that even though he’ll get less time when Debuchy returns, he wouldn’t get much 1st 11 time with any of the other top teams.
    It’s quite amusing that originally the fuss was all about Toral coming to us and HB rather fell below the radar, and although Toral is still showing good potential he’s still a year plus away from becoming a 1st team regular.

  15. I am not sure, but I think Tony might be still getting used to the different eyesight. Late last night, Daily Mail I believe came out with a new article on FFP and QPR. Almost 60 million (Pounds I believe) is a probable fine.

    Arsenal.com juggled the articles on the website, and snuck in one or possible two. One is on the fullbacks, and theother is on Theo.

    COYG!

  16. Walter I agree completely about Bellerin. And you can’t teach pace! Hey Tony, give us a look, ha ha. Congrats and all the best.

  17. I wonder if I am going to find commentary, or if other people will find a feed outside of the UK. The BBC is being very flaky.

    Yesterday, TheRegister had an article about a raft of IP address ranges that involve the UK, suddenly being redirected to some location in the Ukraine before getting to the UK. Included was a bunch of nuclear technology related addresses. It may be the DNS routing tables are just now getting fixed.

    As briefly alluded to in
    http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/41770#comment-835536
    there is an article at Arsenal.com about Wenger easing Theo back into play from his cruciate ligament injury. There have been a bunch of articles popping up in the news about Theo’s contract coming up, and is Wenger going to sell him. All because he hasn’t been getting time on the field. Same thing happened with Per, a one game rest is automatically the indication of being sold. Wenger has apparently seen some good information on cruciate ligament damage.

    In other medja “stories”, Arsenal are still being associated with 50-100 strikers elsewhere. Of course, not only are they forgetting we have lots of strikers, but that Podolski was only loaned (he will be back), Campbell was loaned (he will be back), Wellington now has a work permit and is out on loan and will be back. I’m not sure about Ryo, who seems to be getting half time with a reserve team across the English Channel.

    Fat Sam was worried that people might think that WHam was wasting money going to Dubai for some warm weather (something in the Evening Standard, written by Fat Sam). More detail on the tea cup is in the article, as well as detail on the dislocated shoulder (weight lifting accident it seems). I think it is important that WHam players learn about the working conditions in Dubai before the 2022 World Cup.

    I think I am beginning to understand the website SportsMole. I originally thought Mole was the burrowing animal that likes to dig up lawns, sort of like the movie CaddyShack. But no, I am beginning to think that Mole is lacking a diacritical mark, and it is Mole’ (or something to that effect). A mole’ being a “concoction” in a Mexican kitchen. Guacamole’ is a concoction of creamed avacado and other stuff. I think that SportsMole’ is a concoction of turf (grass, dirt, …) and assorted BS that the authors can dig up.

    COYG!

  18. Gord was the BBC flaky/redirection Ukraine due to the solar flares? Do you listen to the Arsenal games via Arsenal player?
    COYG!

  19. Good morning Kenneth (it is 8:49 in the morning here). If you visit Arsenal.com early in the day, you typically see a twit from Alexis saying “Good Morning” (well, except in Spanish).

    I looked into Arsenal Player a little bit more, and it seems to require flash, which is a security nightmare. So, I am still just reading about games for the most part.

    With respect to traffic being rerouted via Ukraine, it was Ars Technica and not TheRegister that had the story. There is no update on the story, and I just read all the comments, and none of them seem to have a cause nailed down.

    The BBC still up to being dumb. Their commentary on all the football as usual has an overweighting of basing when it comes to Arsenal bashing. But, the QPR/CPalace game, the first mention of scoring is the 3-1 goal. It could be the flaky connection. No sign of Sanogo or Chamakh in the CPalace lineup (subs? injured?).

    TheRegister has noticed that the BBC is having problems today.
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/03/14/bbc_online_outage/

  20. Morning Gord, how do you survive without flash? Yahoo service isnt too bad, better than BBC worth checking out.
    COYG!

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