Marseille and Atalanta keen on Arsenal defender – Should Arteta sanction a deal?

Should Arsenal let Tavares leave?

As first reported by Foot Mercato, French side Olympique de Marseille are keen to sign Arsenal left-back Nuno Tavares on a season-long loan deal.

The 22-year-old, who the Gunners signed last season, is attracting some attention across Europe as Italian outfit Atalanta are also monitoring his situation.

Since signing for the club roughly one year ago, the Portuguese has had a mixed debut season. When he’s been good, he’s been really good. And when he’s been bad… Arsenal fans have the idea.

That’s why Mikel Arteta is willing to sanction a temporary exit for the 22-year-old, as it’s clear he needs more time developing his game, especially the defensive side.

But the question arises: Shouldn’t the club focus on other priority positions?

Allocating resources on the left side of the defense when the team has other areas to focus will certainly be debated among footballing circles.

In my opinion, Tavares has been decent in his debut season. He has made mistakes but it’s only natural considering that his peak years are still far away.

Signing an out-and-out full back on his position would be a short-sighted move. That’s why I am not thrilled by the prospect of Arsenal chasing Bologna’s Aaron Hickey.

Tavares’ ceiling is pretty high. Even though he might not be ready to be a regular starter at the Emirates Stadium just now, I think he will be in a few season’s time.

Signing Lisandro Martinez makes perfect sense in this case. He can be used as a makeshift left-back when Kieran Tierney is out with injury (which he almost always is).

When Tavares returns, Martinez can easily slot back to his natural position of left center-back. In that way, we won’t be impeding the development of the Portuguese, while also providing sufficient cover for Tierney next season.

The talks regarding a loan switch for Tavares is still at preliminary stages. But if he does swaps Arsenal for another club in Europe on a temporary basis, it will be rational.

Yash Bisht

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19 Comments

  1. He has some good raw potential, but should he be so raw at 22? He makes big errors I would expect someone in their late teens to be making, but ironed out in their early 20’s. And let’s not even talk about his decision making when shooting, and his terrible ability at shooting!

    1. Hahaha!!!@jombo,i like him a lot as an attacker but not as a defender.a loan move to a low pressure club will do the trick to help his mental just like it did to saliba.Goodluck Nuno.

      1. A low lvl pressure club !
        They play in the CL this season we don’t ,let’s not talk about pressure ,because there’s certainly not that much at this club going by rewarding new and improved contracts for doing very little .

  2. Well Jorge Sampaoli certainly knows how to coach our players properly having turned Saliba into one of the finest young defenders in the world and turning around the fortunes of Guendouzi,it wouldn’t be such a bad idea getting him to coach Tavares how to play if our own manager doesn’t know how to .

          1. What’s that got to do with Marseille and Sampaoli ,
            But Maybe they would be even better if they had been loaded out to Marseille and Sampaoli.

            1. Yeah but the confidence you feel having a successfull spell in the PL can’t be compared to that of ligue 1 therefore our kids are a step higher.

          2. btw that’s not a truthful statement Fk…if these two superior scouting operations are in for him, we should maybe re-up his deal and put in a high triggering clause, so that we don’t lose him once some real coaching cleans up some of his rough edges…personally, I would rather he remain in-house, but it doesn’t seem like MA has the time to coach-up those who aren’t part of his plan A

  3. The LB situation is becoming potentially quite serious. Tierney looks likely to be a regular in the medical room. Even if we signed Martinez the Argentinian can’t play 50 games. What if he gets overplayed and injured also? After what happened down the stretch last season can we afford to loan a player when our number one LB is so injury prone? Tierney will probably end up back at Celtic for a much reduced fee. What is also concerning is that Tomiyasu and Partey also saw plenty of the medical room last season. Partey’s value will be collapsing especially with him being 29yrs and on 250k p/w. If we could sell Tierney for 20m and Partey for 25m now I would not hesitate to let them both go.

  4. Nuno is better playing at LWB in a back 5 which is not the system we deploy often, so I think we should consider a permanent sale or loan with an option to buy for £15-20M which means we would have doubled our investment on him. Atalanta or Marseille would be a good move for him.

  5. I dont care how good he is going forward, if u cant defend you are not good enough to play in our backline, period. We should accept any decent offer and get rid of this clown asap.

  6. Tavares reminds me a lot of armand traore – incredibly gifted physically and very good technically. My recollection is that traore didn’t quite cut it defensively and so was kept out by clichy but I think injuries also had an impact
    I hope tavares can either figure out the missing details or switch to a new position, because he has a lot of talent that shouldn’t be wasted.

  7. Why does anyone , MA included, regard TAVARES AS A DEFENDER AT ALL?
    THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT HE CAN DEFEND AT ALL.

    BUT WHEN GOING FORWARD HE SHOWS DEFINITE ABILITY,SO EITHER PLAY HIM FURTHER FORWARD OR GET RID COMPLETELY, IS MY VIEW.

    I HOPE HE STAYS AND IS GIVEN A PROPER CHANCE IN HIS CORRECT POSITION, WHICH IS NOT AS A DEFENDER.

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