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Happy birthday (and good luck) Kieran Tierney

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo Today I thought I’d take a bit of time to pay homage to our former (almost) Scottish left back Kieran Tierney, who is returning to his homeland and Celtic in the summer, following almost six year’s at the club, having signed in September 2019.

It’s his birthday today too. So happy birthday to KT. You’ve been a good – albeit injury-prone (will get to that in a bit) representative of The Arsenal.

I remember being excited about this one at the time when it first emerged that we were picking him up for around the £25million mark at the time. We were getting a star at Celtic, a guy who had been in the first team from a teenager, somebody who was a strong-running fullback who could get beyond his man and deliver good balls into the box. At that time we had the likes of Lacazette and Aubameyang in the team who could feed off of KT’s deliveries and with Auba playing wide left, we had a guy who could overlap to create him space for us to hopefully punish teams on.

The start probably set the signs of things to come though. He was injured when he arrived from Celtic and didn’t actually make his first start until September, but I remember him looking pretty good even in those early stages and not really getting the chance to build up and bed in to his new club with his new teammates. Then, he had that shoulder injury in December and that kept him out from December until March and a total of 19 games. It was a real shame because he’d started to find his rhythm and it was cruelly taken away from him.

But sadly, that has been his Arsenal career; promise, hope, but all in smaller sample sizes as his body let him down time and time again. The next season – the one punctuated by COVID – he missed 16 games, then the season after that knee surgery kept him out for 17 games. The pattern was set and as we all know, football doesn’t wait around and football teams don’t wait around. By the time he was back and ready to fight for his place, Arsenal had been evolving, to the point where his skillset just wasn’t what was our approach any more. In 2022/23 we had migrated to the inverted full back approach and KT was a bit-part player. He managed 36 appearances in all competitions, but that was made up of just over 1,400 minutes – which averages at around 38 minutes per match.

And so a stint in Spain came the following season, but again, his injury problems probably prevented him from securing a permanent move if he wanted it. I seem to recall there being talks of how the fans and coaching staff thought very positively of him, but injuries stopped that and he ended up missing 21 games that season too. Once again his body had let him down. Even this season just gone he was out from June until November, so he never really got that full pre season, he wasn’t really in contention at all until our injury problems kicked in, for which he then started to see some game time in 2025.

Here’s some of the positive stuff though. He leaves Arsenal with an FA Cup winners medal, having played in that final as part of a back three and I thought he looked like he adapted well to that position. He also scored a few pretty snazzy goals, including that fabulous one in the snow in the Black Country against West Brom, which felt very on brand for the Scot. I think that game might have also have been the infamous ‘Tesco bag’ game (I might be misremembering though) in which he brought his boots in a Tesco back, which immediately enamoured him to us all. This was a simple, down-to-earth, lovely guy who was very talented and wasn’t impacted by the trappings and money of professional football.

On the last home game of this season he got a rousing applause in Block Five every time he came down to warm up and, fittingly, he saw off his Arsenal career with a goal against Southampton, playing as a centre half once again. I don’t know a single Arsenal fan who has a bad word to say about this kid. It is a shame his career never went in the direction I think a lot of us had hoped it would, but the fact he leaves with so much love from The Arsenal fans – which he has reciprocated back in an online post thanking everyone for his time – is a real testament to his character.

Go smash it in Scotland, KT, we’re all behind you, so let’s hope you can recapture your form and your injury problems are behind you.

I think I’m going to leave it there for today’s musings. Once more for good luck though:

Happy birthday KT and good luck at Celtic!

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.