Arsenal has missed William Saliba in the last few games that he has been unavailable through injury and the Frenchman is reportedly keen on playing.
His injury seems serious, so the club has chosen not to field him in matches until he is fully fit.
At the moment, it remains largely unclear if he will play for the Gunners again before this season ends and the club fans are hoping he does return.
Saliba has been in superb form when he plays, which makes him one of the key men at the club.
Sometimes, players play through the pain for their club, which is tricky because it could worsen the injury, but former Frank McAvennie says some injuries don’t get worse.
Although he admits, the Gunners will get to decide if they want to take that risk or not.
He tells Football Insider: “Saliba gets a lot of credit from me for his attitude, I think it is great that he wants to play. I always say players do not do that enough so fair play to him.
“It really depends on the injury, the manager will have the final say and if the doctor says no he will not do it. I would not want him to play through the pain barrier if it is going to be worse in the long run.“
Just Arsenal Opinion
Saliba is a key player for us and it can be tempting to want to field him even when he is not 100% fit.
However, we must be careful not to worsen the injury and must trust the Judgement of the club’s medics.
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I see no chance at all of a less than 100% fit SALIBA playing at all in this match. He has not played for weeks and cannot possibly be MATCH fit, even were he able to play without further damage.
I say forget this possible hope, as it is in reality never going to happen, whatever the player himself might wish.
HE will not make the ultimate decision. Nor will he play, as is obvious.
Not sure we need to go there , we are not desperate, why risk him, surely he can’t offers more than a fit a robust Holding that has been doing his self justice in my opinion.
What we miss that the writer didn’t pick up, is that mental strength that we have found wanting now that we are turning for home.
Holding is error prone. There is a reason we are conceding more goals. And one of them is holdings positional play on set pieces, he let hid man go for the soton 3rd goal and secondly he cant play out from the back under pressure. Something that Saliba is exceptional at. Add to that mistakes by other team members and you have a team that is shipping goals at an alarming rate. Not sure what games you been watching.
You’re correct that Saliba is better at playing out from the back than Holding. But you also miss the fact that our attack keeps scoring which means that Holding’s limitations at playing out from the back is not the issue. The issues are that:
1. Our manager will always pick his favorite players even when things ain’t working
2. The mental strength of the entire team (not about Holding) is weak
I doubt that Saliba would have prevented is from conceding those goals. And how many of the goals we conceded can you directly blame Holding for?
Saliba should not risk his career on a fool’s errand
As far as we know about the seriousness of his injury ( which is nothing) playing him could leave him a cripple for life. Back injuries can be incredibly difficult to manage so I think any decision should left to the medical staff and in any case, as Jon mentioned, Saliba having not trained for weeks cannot be in anyway match fit.
Saliba is by all means what Arsenal need, the games we have played without him has seen us conceed more goals, and for that matter, we are conceding silly goals if am to call it that way.. Holding and Gabriel are all error prone…if the manager doesn’t check and change things, it might hit us against deadly Mancity..May be he tries Jakub or White as Centre backs to cover Gabriel..
Also Zinchenko is more of a Midfielder than defender, he is so offensive that he leaves huge spaces and all the 3 draws, he had hands in some goals conceded..As for playing Saliba, only Medics can decide…
Why should a player play through pain? As a fan I would love to see AFC win things but not if it is going to wreck player’s careers through injury. I do not want him to become an Abu Diaby.