Gary Cahill’s will he/won’t he move from Bolton Wanderers to Arsenal was a topic for much conversation throughout the summer. The centre-half was supposed to the cure to all of Arsene Wenger’s problems but as guest writer Tomasz Mortimer asks, is Cahill really as good as people believe?

“The new Tony Adams” were the headlines just a few weeks ago as Arsene Wenger look destined to add Gary Cahill to his ranks at struggling Arsenal. However, the deal never materialised after a reported £6 million offer was rejected by his club, Bolton Wanderers.

The Frenchmen was called every name under the sun after launching such a low-ball attempt at buying one of England’s most regarded centre backs. But that does pose the question; if one of the best managers in world football isn’t prepared to pay any more than £6 million for Cahill, yet willing to pay £10 million for Per Metersacker, is the Bolton player really that good?

Yes, many people argue that Wenger’s defensive buys have been shoddy over his whole reign at Arsenal, but there have been some really solid back-lines along the way. Not least the regular back four throughout the 2003/04 ‘Invincibles’ season – none of which were inherited from the George Graham era. If that’s not an argument killer in itself, then what is?

Going back to Cahill; Bolton were reportedly willing to sell Cahill for a fee of £12 million in the summer. That’s approximately £5million less than Phil Jones cost Man United. For an England international, with a wealth of Premier League experience and a “certain future” as an England regular, why did no-one snap him up? Tottenham and Barcelona were reportedly interested, but both seemed to only be pie in the sky rumours.

In my opinion, Cahill is tremendously composed and really skilled on the ball while he also gets more than his fair share of goals. But that doesn’t make him a good defender. Wenger in the past has been known to only buy defenders that are good on the ball but poor at defending and that is exactly Cahill’s problem. Defensively he is a real liability. His positioning and marking is incredibly poor and static plus he doesn’t throw himself in front of shots, more backs out the way and turns away.

If you look at how many goals Bolton have conceded this season from Cahill’s poor marking you’ll be really surprised. Just taking the Man United game alone Cahill was partially at fault for at least three of the goals, and this season, in the six games the England international has started, Bolton have conceded 18. Obviously you can’t solely blame him for Bolton’s bad start to the season or the defence in general but it just shows how poorly organised Bolton have been with him in the side.

Many people nowadays seem to forget about the art of defending and presume that people like Gerard Pique or Jamie Carragher are the perfect defenders. They have to do something spectacular like carry the ball out of defence or make that last ditch heroic tackle to be noticed whereas doing the simple things like constantly being in the right position and making discreet interceptions is generally overlooked.

Players like Gary Cahill look great to the Match of the Day viewers, but when people actually watch the live, full matches they can see he has problems in his game and that is possibly where all the hype generates from. It’s like watching a player on YouTube – you can’t really judge a player by looking at few clips of their ‘best bits’.

This piece isn’t being harsh on Cahill whatsoever, and over the past few years he has done exceptionally well to become a Premier League first team regular after looking for all the world he was going to drop down into the Championship to rebuild his career. But to compare him to Tony Adams or tout him as a future England regular is ridiculous and there really is a reason that he didn’t move to a bigger team in the summer. Ball-playing centre backs like Thomas Vermaelen or Daniel Agger really seem to be the future of the game, but if they struggle defensively like Cahill then they’re utterly pointless.

Tomasz Mortimer is an authority on Hungarian football and is editor of HungarianFootball.com. His work has been featured on Goal.com, In Bed With Maradona and WorldSoccer.com and you can follow him on Twitter @HungariaFootball.

Photo courtesy of I-LOVE-BARCELON.