SAINT-ETIENNE president Roland Romeyer has revealed William Saliba will be playing for the club next season.

Arsenal are believed to eb closing in on the signing of the 18-year-old centre-back, who is set to return to the French side on loan for the season.

Speaking of the player, Romeyer said: “He will stay at the club this season.

“It is an imperative condition should we come to an agreement for his transfer. It’s also William's wish.”

Saliba move to #AFC is being finalised now according to @TF1. A deal will cost €30m and the defender will be loaned back to #ASSE for 19/20 season.

We better pay that 30m when we get the bastard.

TF1 is good sauce. Tierney next please

Hopefully this comes out of next seasons budget

Maybe if St. Etienne is in no man's land in January we could get him then.

First of all, let me congratulate the team for being proactive. This is the kind of foresight we need to be competitive. Long range planning will be important. I care more about building a dynasty than trying to stay afloat season to season. This feels a part of that thinking, so I applaud the management

That said, I wonder if we risk a principal-agent problem here. On the one hand, how incentivized are St Etienne to actually give the player opportunities ahead of Subotic and Kolo, given that they aren’t invested in his future. On the other hand, if he does break out, how incentived are they to manage his health and make sure they don’t run him into the ground?

Subotic has moved to Union Berlin.

I think there's very little risk he's going to be on the bench after they kicked up this much fuss to keep him for a year, Claude. They want to keep him because he's good.

Oh. Good. With Subotic gone, he’s the man.
Would be great if we went all in on rebuild and got an Ndicka now, ready for this guy next year.

maybe im in the minority on this, but im not a big fan of loaning him back this season. he might not be ready to dominate the premier league, but now his season next year will likely be very inconsistent as he tries to adjust. so if we are signing him to a 5 year deal and loaning him back, the first 2 years of his deal we wont be getting max value from him. acclimatizing to the league also means being around the first team and getting a feel for england as a whole. the upside of him going back on loan next season is that he gets regular playing time, but he'll be getting it in a mediocre team, in a lesser league. the downside is the lack of time to adjust to england and the risk of injury while hes not even playing for us

ive never seen this guy play, and im pretty confident he'd be better for us in defense than mustafi. this coming season just looks like a writeoff for the team in general, we're punting before the season even starts

The question of whether a loan is good for him is a little irrelevant (I said right at the start of this thread that I think it will benefit both in the long run), the question is that given they are demanding that he be loaned back is it worth signing him? For me it is 100% yes.

Yeah, that's it really.

Yep. If that's what it takes to clinch this deal ahead of other clubs I will take it

goon wrote:

The question of whether a loan is good for him is a little irrelevant (I said right at the start of this thread that I think it will benefit both in the long run), the question is that given they are demanding that he be loaned back is it worth signing him? For me it is 100% yes.

would they demand we loan him back if we offer another £7m?

7m would probably be just about enough for them to fund a loan for an inferior player for a year.

The player wants 1 more year in France by most accounts

We've probably tried to offer extra cash.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

maybe im in the minority on this, but im not a big fan of loaning him back this season. he might not be ready to dominate the premier league, but now his season next year will likely be very inconsistent as he tries to adjust. so if we are signing him to a 5 year deal and loaning him back, the first 2 years of his deal we wont be getting max value from him. acclimatizing to the league also means being around the first team and getting a feel for england as a whole. the upside of him going back on loan next season is that he gets regular playing time, but he'll be getting it in a mediocre team, in a lesser league. the downside is the lack of time to adjust to england and the risk of injury while hes not even playing for us

ive never seen this guy play, and im pretty confident he'd be better for us in defense than mustafi. this coming season just looks like a writeoff for the team in general, we're punting before the season even starts

If he was 22/23 I'd agree with you but he is only 18 years old, which for a CB is very young. Very few I can think of who have gone into big sides and performed at that age  The extra year will do him good and I'd treat this as next summer signing so shouldn't take too much out of our transfer budget.