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.