What is the point of sending William Saliba back to France?

Nice move is the wrong one for Saliba! (Opinion)

William Saliba has finally been relieved of his Arsenal torture, having joined us in the summer on a long awaited transfer and after not even being close to donning an Arsenal shirt, Arteta has sent him out on loan where he will join up with Nice for the rest of the season.

I believe that this is actually the wrong move for Saliba and I’ll tell you why!

Arteta has stressed continuously that Saliba is not ready for football in England yet, and so to get him ready for that he sends him back to France to get game time, all well and good but it won’t help when he comes back to us at the end of his loan spell.

Saliba didn’t play one game for the first team, and I always believe that if a player doesn’t play then he can’t be judged on if he is ready or not, so how Arteta came to the conclusion that Saliba was not ready is beyond me because nobody was witness to his game playing.

If Arteta was witness to an attitude issue in training then I wish he would just come out and be honest, because saying he is not ready for English football is actually a bit patronising!

Saliba needs game time in England to become accustomed to the conditions and pace of the game, he won’t get that in France. If he wasn’t ready upon his first arrival from France then he definitely won’t be ready after the second arrival. I hope this is one move that Arteta does get right though, because I would hate for him to have egg on his face yet again!

I wish Saliba all the best on his loan spell and hopefully when and if he actually does return to Arsenal, he will finally break in to the first team and show us fans why he was so sought after in the first place!

Shenel Osman