Saliba clears the air

Arseblog published a translation of an interview (in French) with William Saliba which clears up a lot of questions about why the young Frenchman was left out of the Europa League team and hasn’t been included in any Premier League matches for Arsenal this season.

In the interview he says that he wasn’t ready. He’d had to sit out for 6 months due to COVID and when he did return to training Arteta was quick to say “you’re not ready”.

I know some people will jump and say that it’s Arteta’s job to make him ready. But it’s difficult to include a guy in training who is 6 months out of shape and form. The player could get hurt, he could hurt someone else, and his lack of fitness is going to hurt your training schemes. It depends on how out of shape and form that player is and that’s the coach’s call. Sending him to the U21 side wasn’t a punishment. It was intended to get him ready.

From there it’s not a huge leap to “what’s the point of putting him in the Europa League squad” if he’s not going to play? I can understand why he wasn’t included there. It feels logical to me.

I’m curious what folks will pivot to now? I’ve seen some say he still should have been included in the EL squad (he’s better than Mustafi, etc.) which doesn’t make any sense: if he’s not fit, he’s not fit. I suppose you could say Arteta’s lying, but then you’d have to say that Saliba is in on the lie (I guess because he’s so classy he doesn’t want to speak bad about Arsenal). But we should go with the most complete, most reliable, and simple explanation available: direct from the source, he says that he had to sit out for 6 months because of circumstances beyond his control and that when he returned, he wasn’t fit or ready.

In each of the matches that I saw him play in for Arsenal, this was the case. In first match he looked like someone who hadn’t played football for years. And in his last match, he had good moments but again made some bad mistakes and looked miles off the pace. He’s shown a tendency to try to over-dribble in each of the matches I’ve seen from him and when he loses the ball he then often lunges in to try to win it back.

I saw that some French papers were calling him the Man of the Match in his first outing for Nice. This seems to fly in the face of all of the speculation that he’s not ready. So I looked at the match data on Whoscored and FBREF and watched the highlight video on Bein.

There is a lot of disagreement about what he did in that match. Whoscored has him rating a 6.4 which isn’t terrible for a CB on the end of a 2-0 defeat (who got a yellow card). And Whoscored also have him winning 3/3 tackles, winning 1/1 dribbles, and making a lot of forward passes. When I checked FBREF they have him trying 1 tackle, and losing it, and trying two pressures, and winning one. His passing was good according to FBREF, where he completed 16/17 long bombs.

But he also got a yellow card for a daft tackle after losing the ball on a dribble, in the 10th minute. I’m not having a go at Saliba here but for both goals he looked switched off and out of position. He also doesn’t seem to understand when (or that he needs) to apply pressure. Which is to be expected when a guy hasn’t played football in a year.

More worrying than Saliba’s early form is that his companions in that match (they played 3CBs) were worse: for the 2nd goal there is a terrible backpass by (Nice’s) Lotomba and while the ball is inching toward the keeper, the Nice RCB (Daniliuk) literally (not figuratively literally) backs up and well out of the play. It’s so weird because he’s facing the direction of Honorat (the Brest player who scores) and opens a HUGE hole behind Saliba which Honorat jogs into. I suppose everyone expects the keeper to get there but it’s some wacky defending when you see how Lotomba hits the back pass: as soon as that pass is hit like that and as soon as you see the ball dribbling like that you should be reacting as a CB. None of the Nice players did and this Daniliuk guy… well, it almost looked like he wanted Honorat to score.

Here’s to hoping he has a nice loan period at Nice, that he discovers some form, gets fit, and rejoins Arsenal in the summer of 2021, healthy and ready to go. And here’s to hoping that the Nice coaches start working with their three CBs. Otherwise, this might not turn out too great and we will be right back here again in 6 months arguing the same nonsense.

Qq

12 comments

  1. I’d like to see him succeed at Arsenal… eventually. He’s big and fast and seems to have decent skill. I get the sense though his signing was a Mislintat scouting left-over that got married to Sanhelli’s love of greasing agents, and we ended up overpaying for a young talent, which led to unrealistic expectations.

    I think Holding/Mari/Gabriel make a solid and young(er) CB corps but none of them have much in the way of foot speed; one more good CB that can cover some ground would be ideal.

    I’m pretty confident we beat Newcastle tomorrow, but I’ve probably just jinxed it.

  2. My money’s on we’ll be back here in six months arguing the same. Don’t understand why we chose to loan him to Nice. Don’t understand why he didn’t play competitive football for six months. Don’t understand what the plan is for him.

    1. Did you read the bit where Saliba had COVID and then the after-effects? That’s the reason for the six months.

      1. I read the interview on Arseblog. It didn’t make it clear that Covid recovery caused the 6 month absence from football. Is this something you’ve read elsewhere?

        1. Somehow I managed to read the second paragraph of this here blog post we are commenting on:

          In the interview he says that he wasn’t ready. He’d had to sit out for 6 months due to COVID and when he did return to training Arteta was quick to say “you’re not ready”.”

          1. Perhaps you should have read the interview translation on Arseblog and you might have, just possibly, arrived at a different conclusion. Pays to pay attention.

      2. No, Salba didn’t have COVID, the French league was cancelled because of it. That is what is meant by the article.

  3. that’s good to hear, tim. i hadn’t a clue why he hadn’t played. i have no pivot for you as i have never stated an opinion on how good he is or who he should play ahead of; i’ve simply never seen him play.

    with that, it’s tough to sit out for 6 months…especially for such a young and inexperienced guy. not only is he young but it’s different when you haven’t played but, at least, have been training (mesut), or are coming back from an injury (martinelli) where you can still do some form of workout. recovering from an illness that precludes you from something as trivial as comfortably going for a brisk walk is another animal…and for six months? and you’re at a level higher than anything you’ve ever seen? heavy.

    good luck to the kid. i’m sure he’ll come back stronger. i hope he comes back ready…ready to move gabriel, holding, mari, david luis, or anyone else in his way, to the bench. we’ll see.

    1. When I checked FBREF they have him trying 1 tackle, and losing it, and trying two pressures, and winning one. His passing was good according to FBREF, where he completed 16/17 long bombs.But he also got a yellow card for a daft tackle after losing the ball on a dribble, in the 10th minute. I’m not having a go at Saliba here but for both goals he looked switched off and out of position. He also doesn’t seem to understand when (or that he needs) to apply pressure. Which is to be expected when a guy hasn’t played football in a year.

      Exactly. You cant draw definitive conclusions from ONE match in the French premier league, when the guy has not played a competitive minute for Arsenal this season, and none in nearly a year overall.

      But it is telling that he’s immediately playing first division ball, albeit for a side in the bottom half of the table (oh wait 😏🤔)… and moreover out-performing his peers, and generally playing well. The guy is a talent, one we thought in 2019 was a generational talent. How many 18 year old unknowns do you pay 27m for, and take the No. 4 shirt away from another player and give to him?

      Where do we the skeptics pivot from here? Nowhere, actually. The interview simply reinforces my view that the club’s handling of the player was muddled. And in his carefully made comments immediately after the deal, his disappointment in the coach and the club was clear. I don’t think that his heart will be on returning to Arsenal, which has wasted half a year of his young life — a year and half if you count the loan-back. But we’ll see if I’m wrong.

      p.s. there’s some confusion here in the comment on the COVID thing. The pandemic break was about 4 months, but he was injured prior to that. He himself did not contract coronavirus.

  4. I hope the bridge between the player and the manager hasn’t burnt down.
    Best case scenario he has a good spell at Nice and comes back becomes a part of the squad. We cannot afford to allocate money for defenders.
    Worst case, he comes back in the summer , puts his tools down and we have to sell him for peanuts

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