Saliba getting his own back? by Dan Smith
Arsenal is facing an issue with William Saliba that they were always likely to face, it’s just our season has been so good we kind of swept the situation under the carpet.
It’s been reported that the Gunners are stunned by the demands their defender has made in order to extend his contract.
Whoever’s leaked this information out has shared it round the media with rumours saying that trebling his current 40,000 pound a week salary won’t be enough for him to commit his future to the club.
It’s funny how this gets leaked out when it suits Arsenal’s agenda, happy for their player to be portrayed as greedy.
Yet when Arsenal wants a talent off the wage bill, and that person wants to be loyal to the agreement, they will play every dirty truck imaginable.
It’s too easy to say Saliba can earn more money and have a better chance of trophies at a PSG as his sole motivation.
Equally how valued does the player feel in North London?
Arsenal have had nearly three years to make the 22-year-old feel settled into English Football.
Yet he’s only played one season with us. If this turns out to be his only campaign with us it will turn out to one of the worst business deals in our history.
We spent 27 million on a teenager, just to loan him to three clubs where he got the attention of a host of possible suitors. That could have happened while he played for us, so we could at least benefit out of the arrangement.
Saliba has never made any secret that he didn’t agree with the decision to send him back to France and felt this wasn’t communicated well with him.
Saliba wasn’t registered for any of our squads in Arteta’s first preseason. Understandably the centreback felt he was good enough to at least make the bench for a team who had just finished 8th, Arsenal’s worse finish in quarter of a century.
When sent to Nice, he said: “It is clear that so much has changed in the last year,” Saliba told RMC. “When I saw that the coach changed a lot changed for me too.
“He judged me on two-and-a-half matches. I would have liked for him to play me more, but he told me I wasn’t ready.
“I was waiting for him to give me a chance, but football is like that. When I initially came to Arsenal the league looked very good, so I showed up to training and wanted to train on my own to show the coach I was ready.’
Despite again impressing in Ligue one and his parent club matching their worse League position in 25 years Saliba was still deemed not good enough to make one of the worse Arsenal squads in decades. It was even more bizarre when he earnt his first caps for France. So, he was good enough to play for the World Champions but not for a team who couldn’t even qualify for Europe?
No wonder Saliba didn’t seem in a hurry to return from Marseille where he was voted Ligue ones best young player and got in the Leagues team of the year.
Marseille’s President wasn’t shy in saying he would love to make a permanent deal happen if he got the hint that’s what all parties wanted.
Saliba never flat out squashed this suggestion, “There is always a chance,” he told Le Parisien when asked about staying with Marseille.
“I do not hide that I am very happy in Marseille.
“I have developed, I have passed a milestone. If I make it into France’s squad it’s thanks to Marseille, because there is a lot of visibility.
They are a very big club with a lot of pressure, but when you’re good there are a lot of good things that happen to you.’
This is where Gooners shouldn’t live in a bubble and be able to see that the sport exists outside of England. If you’re a Frenchman and your local media are hyping you up and you can take your pick of French clubs, why would you be bothered about returning to a country where your manager hasn’t shown faith in you?
I have always maintained that Mikel Arteta has got used to washing his hands of talent the moment they don’t fit into his ethos.
That’s not his fault but his employers. The Kroenke Family should have insisted that the Spaniard work with the resources at his disposal, but a rookie boss was made to think it’s normal management to just discard assets the moment they don’t meet his principles.
Think how many players have had their contracts ripped up, paid to sit at home for long spells or loaned out just so we can reduce the wage bill?
You could probably make an 11. If nothing else, it’s bad business.
Yet all the while he was doing the clubs dirty work by freezing out our high earners Ozil and Aubameyang.
While some might even understand the need to give up on Pepe, and while some might not sympathise with a Bellerin, eventually this term of man management was always going to bite Arteta.
He calls his approach as ‘Non negotiables’ but eventually you get to encounter a player good enough, young enough and holding enough cards where you have to negotiate your ‘non negotiables’.
This isn’t a player the owners want off the wage bill, or a player past his best. This is a defender who was one of the best in his position in the Prem having been the same for years in his homeland.
I wonder now if Arteta wishes, all those years ago, he had communicated better with Saliba.
He was arrogant not too, thinking he had better options, that it would be weakness to compromise with a youngster?
Maybe he forgot the players point of view?
Possibly he have given him a chance a lot sooner.
Saliba was better then what we had for many years before he was given his chance.
Arteta many have got this wrong.
Dan