The defender ended a seven-year stint in north London where he made 162 appearances in all competitions and won two FA Cups by switching the Emirates for Selhurst Park on deadline day.
He played with several Gunners greats and famous club captains during that period, including Granit Xhaka, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, and Martin Odegaard. He also occasionally captained his team. Holding feels he can be a leader for his new team as one of the more seasoned players in the Palace group, both in terms of age and experience playing in European football. He named past captains Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny as the two players he learned the most from.
The center-back told talkSPORT, “I’ve got a lot of experience, I’m 28 years old, and they’ve got a young team at Palace, they’ve got some young lads coming through.”
“Any little things that I’ve learned from my time at Arsenal when I first entered the locker room and you had the likes of Mertesacker and Koscielny, they are just leaders,” the player said. “If I can pass on any information I learned from them to the boys at Palace who are currently a little younger, then I can do that.”
The Eagles’ starting lineups this season have an average age of little over 27, making them the third-oldest in the Premier League (together with Newcastle and slightly behind Fulham and West Ham).
Eberechi Eze, Marc Guehi, and Michael Olise are just a few of Roy Hodgson’s significant players who are on the younger side. In the summer that Holding joined the Gunners, Mertesacker succeeded Mikel Arteta as captain of the team, and the World Cup champion is now the organization’s academy manager.
