Bristol have a new manager this year though. I really liked Lee Johnson and thought it was a shame that they sacked him.

Klaus wrote:

Bristol have a new manager this year though. I really liked Lee Johnson and thought it was a shame that they sacked him.

Seems to be working for them. 4 wins from 4 and top of the table.

Very early days though with a very long championship season.

5 days later

Ornstein says he's likely to stay at this stage. Its not the end of the world.
Train with better players, play some cup games to get his feet wet.

I think that's gonna be disastrous for a player that Arteta doesn't rate. Absolute nonsense to keep a nineteen year old in the stands. What guarantee is there that he's gonna get cup games in the future if he didn't even make the bench for the first two league cup rounds? Never mind the likelihood that we're going out against City in the next round.

My feeling is that his short term problems are mainly fitness/confidence related rather than arteta not rating him. A loan is preferable, but loaning him to the wrong club is equally problematic

Klaus wrote:

I think that's gonna be disastrous for a player that Arteta doesn't rate. Absolute nonsense to keep a nineteen year old in the stands. What guarantee is there that he's gonna get cup games in the future if he didn't even make the bench for the first two league cup rounds? Never mind the likelihood that we're going out against City in the next round.

No guarantee City will beat us. We will play a weakened team and so will they. We beat Liverpool away with same conditions so no reason why we can’t do the same v Man City.

Klaus wrote:

I think that's gonna be disastrous for a player that Arteta doesn't rate. Absolute nonsense to keep a nineteen year old in the stands. What guarantee is there that he's gonna get cup games in the future if he didn't even make the bench for the first two league cup rounds? Never mind the likelihood that we're going out against City in the next round.

Its a tricky situation. The loan could be good or bad staying coukd be good or bad. With the amount of injuries this guy has been getting he might be better off starting uefa Cup and league Cup games for us rather than playing week in week out and breaking down seems like hes still growing. Mari is back at Christmas so if we wanted to we can always give him easy games till then let him get used to his team mates then a loan at Christmas. Roy seems decent at coaching CB's I could see why we considered a loan their.

Norwich is a good shout.

I highly doubt it's fitness or confidence issue since he's been here from July. If it's really those 2 it reflects very badly on his mental state.

Sicario wrote:
Klaus wrote:

I think that's gonna be disastrous for a player that Arteta doesn't rate. Absolute nonsense to keep a nineteen year old in the stands. What guarantee is there that he's gonna get cup games in the future if he didn't even make the bench for the first two league cup rounds? Never mind the likelihood that we're going out against City in the next round.

No guarantee City will beat us. We will play a weakened team and so will they. We beat Liverpool away with same conditions so no reason why we can’t do the same v Man City.

Of course we can beat them, but it's more likely that we're going out against a better team.

Citys second string is a lot better than Pools too.

They fielded literally a first team in the last round of Carabao at Burnley.

Carabao is Pep's fav he wins it with his eyes closed

Brendan Rodgers was praised when he decided to acclimatize his highly rated young center back signing (Caglar Soyuncu) by having him play an entire season of reserve team football.

Why cant we do something like that with Saliba ?

Really? I thought he was starting PL games immediately. I also thought they signed him last summer, not 2018.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert wrote:

Really? I thought he was starting PL games immediately. I also thought they signed him last summer, not 2018.

He made only 4 premier league appearances and mostly played in reserves in his first season at Leicester after joining from Freiburg, where he was a guaranteed starter for two years.

Crazy. I remember we were linked with him in Emery's first summer but we went for Sokratis instead (great decision). I didn't realise Leicester made their move that same summer.

mentalvortex wrote:

He made only 4 premier league appearances and mostly played in reserves in his first season at Leicester after joining from Freiburg, where he was a guaranteed starter for two years.

I think that's a key difference right there. Saliba is 19 by contrast and has only made a handful of first team starts in his life so far. Not having him play at this age, especially after the disrupted season he had last year, is a bit ridiculous. It's how you wreck his development. Hopefully we're looking at loaning him in the January window which is only 10 weeks away.

Saliba is not the only kid we're doing this to either. There are 2-3 others that won't make the bench on most match weekends and we still haven't sent them anywhere on loan. There's still a bit of time but you have to ask questions of both Arteta and the loan manager we hired if they all stay here without getting any minutes.

You guys talk like you know more about player development than people who are paid to do this for a living.

My view is this: no one on here knows what the situation is with Saliba and most everyone is just chatting out their anus.

Playing competitive matches is important, but it's not the be all and end all of player development. They idea that we're somehow ruining their careers by keeping them here for a couple of months is a bit much.

Its October now, its only a couple of months until January, not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. As long as we manage to get him plenty of football in the latter half of the season he'll be fine.

He should be looking to get around 25+ appearances this season. If we can’t give him that then we should loan him out. Otherwise you end up with a situation like Holding, has all the attributes, but lacks the game time situational experience which defenders need. On the other hand, playing a guy who isn’t ready / good enough can destroy his confidence.

I just saw Jeorge Bird claiming that Saliba was left off the Uefa B list (which can be unlimited so there was really no reason to even if he was likely to go on loan at the time), so he's ineligible for Europa League games until at least february. So much for staying here and playing cup games.

The lad must've run over Arteta's cat the first day he pulled up outside London Colney.

That's actually insane. Nobody leaves players out of B list. Literally no point in doing that even if the player is going out on loan, which Arteta just confirmed he is staying

He’s not eligible for the B list is he? Hasn’t been here for 2 years.

Think we have a good chance to win the u21 league and cup now that he will probably play all the matches there

Klaus wrote:
goon wrote:

He’s not eligible for the B list is he? Hasn’t been here for 2 years.

You're right, I just looked this up: https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/news/0255-0e99e723511d-e005f48485eb-1000--all-you-need-to-know-champions-league-group-stage-squads/

It comes down to the same thing anyway: he can't play for us in Europa League, so why on earth didn't we just send him on loan?

Yeah. I think it was Flobs who said the club would know better than us what he needs and I’m sure he’s right, but I can’t imagine this is what they decided he needs. I can only think they’ve been in two minds for most of the summer and after failing to place him somewhere ideal have decided a bad loan is worse than him staying here and playing U23 football.

Have a feeling Arteta sees a few traits in his game he’s not keen on.

Maybe it’s how he receives the ball. He’s a tad cumbersome on that front

I hear he’s the black Maguire.

I heard he's being punished for speaking to Ozil on his first day here.

Puel, who didn't want Saliba sold, is weighing in:

Can't help but feel that he has a point about how top football works in general. Lots of pressure on a teenager who isn't ready and neither the Arsenal nor the St Etienne fans are happy. Why didn't Arsenal have a clear longterm plan for someone we've invested so much in?

In other news, he's starting for our U23 side today together with all the other kids we couldn't find loans for either but are already better than this level:

Shambles.

Klaus wrote:

Puel, who didn't want Saliba sold, is weighing in:

Can't help but feel that he has a point about how top football works in general. Lots of pressure on a teenager who isn't ready and neither the Arsenal nor the St Etienne fans are happy. Why didn't Arsenal have a clear longterm plan for someone we've invested so much in?

Yeah. I have said enough on this issues, but it's getting weirder and weirder to the point nothing make sense about Saliba anymore. From the very first match at Fulham alarm bells were ringing. Just didn't expect it to be this bad. He must surely looked extremely poor and out of depth in training.

Way too much being made of this. He's just not ready, we couldn't expect after signing him for Covid to strike 3 months into the loan and then for family issues to crop up.

No one's got an issue with him not being ready, but why on earth is he playing U23 football at Arsenal at this stage while being left out of Europa League altogether? It's so regressive.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert wrote:

Financial as in that's the main reason he wanted to join us? I don't get his point.

He means that Saliba got a bigger pay check but no playing time.

St Etienne similarly got a big fee but lost someone who should have been a key piece for the next few yeas, and Arsenal potentially avoided having to pay twice as much for a fully developed Saliba at a later date (potentially being the key word here) but then had to pay another £30 million for Gabriel anyway when Saliba wasn't ready, so nothing was really gained. His point is that the transfer was motivated by money at every turn rather than football reasons. Puel reportedly got a shock when he took over St Etienne last October and was told that Saliba had already been sold. I remember he criticised their board publicly for their short-sightedness.

Klaus weren’t you against loaning out players like Nelson because they should be able to get a spot on the team?
In any case kids absolutely need top level minutes. Having a team with 7 centre backs is detrimental to either concentrating resources in super quality players or availing minutes for high quality youth. Hopefully, awful has better luck cleaning up the squad in December. We really need to start taking write offs now if we are going to advance one or both agendas.