Thanks for sharing - hopefully we can now put this myth about him being bust to bed.

Not ready and needing a loan for another transition year doesn't equate to being a bust

goon wrote:

Arteta confirms it’s both personal and professional issues that have been the issue, but sounds much more positive. Unless he’s suddenly going to leap frog Holding, Luiz and Chambers I think we’re better off loaning him for six months, preferably to a PL or Championship side.

Considering our dire state and the performances of all our CBs bar Gabriel could he really be worse than them?

Absolute stupidity not selecting him for the Europa cup squad.

Does lead to question marks over Arteta's decision making.

Agree not having him in the Europa squad is madness. Think people are being very harsh on Rob Holding all of a sudden though. He's been mostly pretty solid this season.

He has but with Holding my feeling is this is his best, he won't get any better. If that is the case then his ceiling isn't high enough to be in our first XI.

He's been managed badly whatever the circumstances and I think as a young player Arteta should have anticipated his improvement and given him that incentive and hope that he could actually play. But what's done is done, I think that's a clear example of Arteta inexperience on these matters.

As qs says though I don't think our centre backs have been bad, or our defence for that matter. We have the 4th best defensive record in the league and that's despite attacking with numbers.

Qwiss! wrote:

Agree not having him in the Europa squad is madness. Think people are being very harsh on Rob Holding all of a sudden though. He's been mostly pretty solid this season.

He's decent do doubt, Top teams target getting runners in behind him all the time. It's a super easy way to beak us down.

Qwiss! wrote:

Agree not having him in the Europa squad is madness. Think people are being very harsh on Rob Holding all of a sudden though. He's been mostly pretty solid this season.

It's absolutely insane. I think Arteta is far too cautious with youth players anyway. He barely played many in Carabao too.

Clrnc wrote:

Qwiss! wrote:

Agree not having him in the Europa squad is madness. Think people are being very harsh on Rob Holding all of a sudden though. He's been mostly pretty solid this season.

It's absolutely insane. I think Arteta is far too cautious with youth players anyway. He barely played many in Carabao too.

Its frustrating as the amount of young talent coming through is the only exiting thing about us at the moment.

None of our young players make me sit up apart from Martinelli. Who knows what sort of player he will become after such a serious injury and all that lost time? Besides he’s essentially a first team player now.

Talk he may be sold

How bizarre a signing this has turned out to be. At least with Park or Bischoff there wasn't any hope or big expectations.

The bizarre thing about it all is Arteta, and serious question marks over whether he is the right man to lead a club who relies on developing young players. He’s far too risk averse and cautious.

The whole Saliba affair is curious. Is this why Raul has been fired?

I really don't think one needs to see too much of Saliba to know his quality, and that he's probably favorable to achieve the kind of reputation and foothold that the likes of Umtiti or Varane have in the national side. So whatever is going on or sounds like may happen, his quality and potential will be down the list of reasons for me.

No idea about Raul, but the transfer value for Saliba never seemed inflated for me.

He's not even been give Europa League or League Cup games. I would guess non-footballing reasons are at play.

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

Talk he may be sold

Pretty houseboat source. Edu and arteta are on the dunce list if they sell a 25m player before he even sets foot in the first team 

Yeah there's no way they'll do that unless he's been caught doing drugs or something.

Saliba will get loaned out in January, and when he returns in the summer or a year from now or whenever it might or might not be Arteta who's still managing Arsenal. Either way the club has invested too much time and money in him already to just let Art chuck him out.

Madness , this guy can't be worse than what we have bar Gabriel. Why on earth would we sell without giving him a chance?

He may not be good enough right now, but he will be learning from mistakes if played and has potential to he better than those two. Arteta is putting results over developing talent and wants Saliba to learn his trade elsewhere, which is fair enough especially as young centre backs can make big mistakes, but the first team aren’t even delivering results right now either. Would rather he uses this season as a transition period because lets face it our best chance of getting back into the CL is through winning the europa league.

What’s the point in playing Holding, Luiz, Willian, Xhaka, Elneny, Laca etc if they aren’t getting us into the CL anyway. Better off developing talent that may get us back into the top 4 next season.

Klaus wrote:

Yeah there's no way they'll do that unless he's been caught doing drugs or something.

Saliba will get loaned out in January, and when he returns in the summer or a year from now or whenever it might or might not be Arteta who's still managing Arsenal. Either way the club has invested too much time and money in him already to just let Art chuck him out.

The guy was legit supposed to be the next big thing, so the whole affair is unsettling until we see the direction. 

That said, the approach of thinking we’ve already invested too much time and money into players to let go of them is what has gotten us in trouble in the past. It’s why we persisted forever with guys like Walcott, and generally have squad bloat. We should never look backwards with players, only forward. What might you give us, what help will you need to get there, and what will it cost? 

Claudius wrote:

That said, the approach of thinking we’ve already invested too much time and money into players to let go of them is what has gotten us in trouble in the past. It’s why we persisted forever with guys like Walcott, and generally have squad bloat.

Walcott played 400 games for us over a 12 year career. Saliba is a teenager who cost over £30 million who hasn't even debuted for the first team yet. You can't blow that kind of money on a youth player only to then consider it a sunk cost and move on before he has played a single minute, that's suicidal.

There's a longterm plan in place for routing players like him through and we have to commit to it regardless of any bumps in the road or who the manager is. If they can't get minutes here they have to get them elsewhere. The same is true of Eddie, Nelson, Smith-Rowe, Balogun, etc. Even Guendouzi, who's currently been put out to pasture at Hertha Berlin. If you want Arsenal to be a serious club again then we need to have serious structures.

I agree completely with your second paragraph. We need to have a long term plan for everyone.
On the minutes issue, I’m a bit worried about forwards. Some of these guys really need to think about going on loan and getting time under the belts. The only person who should consider himself safe is Nketiah because he is starting and producing, and so is well integrated. But I look at a guy like Nelson and think about the opportunity cost of him just sitting on the bench versus starting at Burnley every week.

But I no longer care about the £30m. That was a buying decision. Now we need to make decisions about winning over the next 2 to 3 seasons. Vinai can come back and tell Edu and the scouts to buy better or the same based on past experience. But that’s all.

It's about winning, but it's also about how you get there and with what money.

Consider this for a moment Claude: We invested £80 million in two - very good - starting players (Gabriel and Partey) this summer, and we're worse off in the table for it. We did the same thing last season (Tierney and Pepe) when we had our worst season in the era of the three-point system, and the year before (Leno and Auba) where both seasons ended in bitter disappointment.

Maybe the issue isn't that we're incapable of finding a good player every summer/winter, but that we don't have enough of them pulling in one direction at once. You have two ways of getting there: the City and PSG way, where you just buy everyone at once because you don't play by the same rules as everyone else, or the way of the rest, where you keep working with what you have at the moment while you create better pathways for players to emerge and grow.

Arteta is doing a 1/10 job this season with what he's got in the present, but that shouldn't affect Saliba's longterm whereabouts at Arsenal, at least not before he has been tested thoroughly and been given help to realise his talent. And selling him for half of what we paid right now is not going to get us to move up a tier any quicker.

KingslandBarge wrote:

I really don't think one needs to see too much of Saliba to know his quality, and that he's probably favorable to achieve the kind of reputation and foothold that the likes of Umtiti or Varane have in the national side. So whatever is going on or sounds like may happen,  his quality and potential will be down the list of reasons for me.

No idea about Raul, but the transfer value for Saliba never seemed inflated for me.

I think that's the entire problem. How many people actually watched him at St. Etienne to form the conclusion that he was a quality prospect? It seems like his entire reputation within the fanbase was built upon him being French, resembling Varane in terms of looks/stature and his 30 million price tag. The guy barely played for a shit team in a shit league. Since he's arrived here, how many people have actually watched him play for the reserves?

He's made fewer than 30 league starts in his entire career and he's 19 years old. And that's in France. I have never seen him play, but I have followed football long enough to know that someone of that age and experience does not play for the top-flight clubs in England aspiring for success. A I said when we signed him that the best thing we could do for his career is to let him stay in France for the next 4/5 years, let him clock up 150 appearances and then reassess.

22-year-old CB's are massively error-prone regardless of their potential so 19-year-old CB's shouldn't even be in the conversation. That's not to say that he couldn't have played in the dead rubber games but I wouldn't be surprised if he's way too raw at this stage of his career.

Didn't Arteta sort of recently admitted that in hindsight he should have registered Saliba for the EL squad? There seemed to have been a hint or regret, like he wasnt expecting Saliba to turn it around so quickly, whatever the issue was (personal or footballing). Someone had suggested this had betrayed Arteta's lack of experience, and I think that's right.

Klaus wrote:

It's about winning, but it's also about how you get there and with what money.

Consider this for a moment Claude: We invested £80 million in two - very good - starting players (Gabriel and Partey) this summer, and we're worse off in the table for it. We did the same thing last season (Tierney and Pepe) when we had our worst season in the era of the three-point system, and the year before (Leno and Auba).

Maybe the issue isn't that we're incapable of finding a good player every summer/winter, but that we don't have enough of them pulling in one direction at once. You have two ways of getting there: the City and PSG way, where you just buy everyone at once because you don't play by the same rules as everyone else, or the way of the rest, where you keep working with what you have at the moment while you create better pathways for players to emerge and grow.

Arteta is doing a 1/10 work this season with what he's got in the present, but that shouldn't affect Saliba's longterm whereabouts at Arsenal, at least not before he has been tested thoroughly and been given help to realise his talent. And selling him for half of what we paid right now is not going to get us to move up a tier any quicker.

I’m not saying we should sell him. The kid is obviously young. The best thing for him last 3 months would’ve been to be playing here or somewhere else full time, all else permitting. But I don’t know enough about his situation.

I’m just saying we need to divorce playing decisions from buying decisions when making decisions going forward. Take Pépé, I have faith he will be good for us. But if he was actually shit, the worst thing we could do is say, he cost us £70m, we need to get the most out of him so he has to stay and play for 5 years.
But we also need to help ourselves by making the best buying decisions possible. And we can do that with stability, a clear plan about what our playing ethos is, the player profiles required, and having an overall player lifecycle plan that dictates when players should ideally be bought, promoted, sold. If we have that blueprint to work from it is easier to make good decisions and save ourselves from overspending on players we won’t use.

I wouldn't be surprised if Per was involved in all this. He's very committed to players' mental health.

Seems to be more vocal on social media.

Probs not much to read in to it, but I sense he’s a bit baffled by his situation.

He’ll go out on loan and leave.

Don’t blame him for being peeved but not sure being vocal about it on social media is the way to go about it.

FEBravo wrote:

Didn't Arteta sort of recently admitted that in hindsight he should have registered Saliba for the EL squad? There seemed to have been a hint or regret, like he wasnt expecting Saliba to turn it around so quickly, whatever the issue was (personal or footballing). Someone had suggested this had betrayed Arteta's lack of experience, and I think that's right.

The U turn on balogun is another makes me feel there's beem some rash decisions made at the start of the season that they wish they could walk back. 

Now I am curious, what did he do to offend Arteta and get locked up like this?

Are people reading that much into a fairly innocuous post on IG? Guess COVID does give everyone more time to obsess over minutiae...

The reality of this whole situation is likely far more mundane than any of these conspiracy theories.

Clrnc wrote:

Now I am curious, what did he do to offend Arteta and get locked up like this?

Think you’re taking it a little too literally, he’s basically just referring to the fact that he can’t and isn’t playing.

how is Doozy getting along btw?

Was apparently very good today against Monchengladbach.

Scored a cracking goal too.

Yep he’s been excellent in recent games. Value soaring at the very least