After just one game for Arsenal, Ben White discovered how bright the spotlight is when you are a £50million player.
Arsenal had just slumped to a 2-0 defeat at Brentford in the first game of the season and former England defenders Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville did not hold back in their post-match analysis.
“People are going to watch tonight and think, just play long balls on Ben White’s head and you are going to get joy,” said Carragher.
Neville added: “Let’s be clear those [Ivan] Toney clips, those five or six ones where we he has got bullied, nudged around, that’s going to be the pre-match analysis of every team that plays Arsenal.”
The implication was that White was a potential weak link due to his height and ability in the air. Despite his difficult debut, White and people around him did not panic. Nor did those at Arsenal, who were aware their new defence had not been properly assembled yet. A Covid outbreak on the eve of the season had disrupted preparations too.
White has come a long way since that opening night at Brentford, playing so well for Arsenal that last week he was called up to the England squad for the first time since Euro 2020. The centre-back has ended talk that he cannot hack it when strikers get physical with some commanding displays in an Arsenal team in pole position to finish fourth.
Those who have worked with White in the past are shocked that he was ever seen as a soft touch.
“That’s rubbish,” says Peterborough’s director of football Barry Fry, who signed White on loan from Brighton in 2019. “There were plenty of people in League One when he was playing for us who wanted to bully him, beat him up, and they weren’t successful in doing it.”
Peterborough landed White on loan in 2019 thanks to Fry’s relationship with Dan Ashworth, who was Brighton’s technical director at the time. The young centre-back slotted in quickly to life there, even filling in at right-back and midfield on occasion.
“We wanted to keep him, but Leeds came in that summer and blew us out the water,” says Fry. “He was outstanding, we always knew he’d go on to become an England and Premier League player.
“I always thought he’d make a captain one day. He is quiet and respectable off the field, but on the field he commands a lot of respect.”
White’s spells with Newport in League Two and then Peterborough in League One are seen as crucial to his development, providing the steel that has helped him this season. When he joined Newport in 2017 he could have signed for Crawley, but instead wanted to get far away from home and out of his comfort zone.
“Youngsters learn way more playing men’s football than just playing for the Under-23s,” says Fry. “Even David Beckham went on loan didn’t he.”
There is a touch of Beckham about White, given his good looks and love of fashion. He has fought the hard way during his career, though, and being released by Southampton and battling with illness during childhood also toughened him up.
Much has been made about an interview White conducted last year in which he admitted that he does not watch a lot of football, but he takes his own game very seriously and has a gym at his house to keep in shape. He likes to be active in his spare time and took up surfing when he was living in Brighton.
The 24-year-old was on Arsenal’s radar before last summer and that was partly down to the club’s push to use data in scouting. Under technical director Edu, the scouting department has been revamped and StatDNA, their in-house data and analytics company, plays a key role.
When Arsenal were looking to sign a centre-back, White topped a lot of the metrics manager Mikel Arteta wanted, with his passing ability and skill at dribbling the ball out from the back key.
It is why Arsenal parted with £50m and, despite some interest from Manchester United, they were always front runners to sign him last summer.
“He’s had a brilliant season,” said Arteta recently. “Straight away at his age, he’s been great.”
White’s form has duly earned him an England recall for the upcoming friendlies against Switzerland Ivory Coast. He was a late call-up for last summer's Euros, drafted in after Trent Alexander-Arnold got injured, but is now is determined to cement his place in the squad ahead of the World Cup in Qatar later this year.
Some of the other centre-backs in the England squad have not covered themselves in glory this season and it is a position in Southgate’s side that feels up for grabs.
At the start of the season not many would have predicted White in the reckoning to start for England, but he seems ready to prove his critics wrong again.
