AC Milan has added Pablo Mari to their list of defender targets, according to Sky Sports Italia via Sports Witness.
The Spaniard was one of Arsenal’s first signing of the Mikel Arteta era, and he had been a key player at the club.
However, the arrival of the likes of Gabriel Magalhaes and Ben White has pushed him down the pecking order.
He has hardly played this season and could even ask to leave the club.
The report says Milan has lost some key defenders recently, including Alessio Romagnoli and Fikayo Tomori to covid.
They are now looking to reinforce that position with players from the Premier League and one of them is Mari.
Just Arsenal Opinion
Mari would struggle to play for Arsenal again, especially if the options ahead of him keep performing well.
The defender can do a job, but other defenders are better than him at the Emirates.
He could get more game time if he stays until next season when we would hopefully return to Europe.
But moving to Milan this month is also a good idea for the former Manchester City player.
At Milan, he could beat the other defenders and consistently start matches for them.
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No loan. Sale only and for a good profit. Stop getting bullied in the market. Let him go and make room for saliba next season. Rotate between white Gabriel and saliba next season. For this season, we should have enough cover with holding and chambers
Pablo Mari should go because he won’t play regularly at Arsenal and he is wasting his best years playing for a coach that shows no ability to rotate players successfully to keep squad players involved while continuing to win.
Any links between Mari going and William Saliba returning are tenuous at best. The two situations are entirely unrelated, especially from the player’s perspective.
Further, Mikel Arteta has shown himself to be think-skinned and unable to repair rifts with players. He fell out with Guendouzi and Gueondouzi is gone (also to Marseilles). He has picked a completely unnnecessary fight with Pierre Emerick Aubameyang and has shown zero interest in healing that rift; taking a minor inciident and turning it into a lever to rid the club of a big contract that the team no longer feels obligated to honor. The Mesut Ozil situation has been picked over to death, but the bottom line is, Arteta took his marching orders from the club and ran Ozil out of the club when they team had no other recognized attacking midfielder on the roster, then claimed it was for footballing reasons.
Saliba is out on loan because he feels betrayed by Arteta and the truth is, he was. The manager made a snap jusgement and he was wrong. Worse, he never gave Saliba a chance and though the Frenchman has repeatedly proven Arteta wrong, the Arsenal manager has refused to accept he made a mistake. Saliba being on loan and showing just how good he is at Marseilles has probably done more to widen the rift with Arteta because match after match after match, William Saliba has proven he deserved that chance with Arsenal and Arteta never gave it to him. Arteta and Arsenal have demonstrated zero ability to heal rifts.
If Saliba did return, it would be with one year left on his contract and he’d be coming back into a defense that features Ben White and Gabriel to the exclusion of all others, barring suspension or injury. Would Saliba trust Arteta and the club that has shown no trust in him to date enough to sign a new deal? It would be a huge leap of faith on the player’s part; one that the team has not shown themselves worthy of.
From a purely football perspective, given that Arteta has settled on Gabriel and White, why would Saliba return to the team as a squad player? He is playing at Marseilles, where the club is tied for second place and better situated than Arsenal to play Champions League football next season.
Thus, the Mari transfer to Milan is not making room for Saliba. Mari should go for the sake of his own career. A better question might be; what quality players would sign for Arsenal, knowing from the outset they will never play?
You are so ignorant and will discover that come August,