What probably happened was that Arsenal wanted to get rid of a bunch of old players (Özil, Mustafi, Sokratis, etc) but were unable to do so, and it ended up affecting Saliba and a couple of others who we only wanted to loan out in case we didn't manage to phase out the old arses, because it would have left us with a decimated squad otherwise.
I bet we had a deal agreed with St Etienne if we could get rid of some other guys, but we left it too late to finalise transfers/loans for them, and once it became clear that they were staying put we had missed the chance to loan out Saliba instead.
We should have just put the development of Saliba first and loaned him out either way when it became obvious that he wasn't going to play for us. But he kept him just in case, the same way we did with Nketiah in January. Eddie never gets a game and isn't even included in most match squads anymore but he's collateral in the squad.
