Claudius No, I'm talking about the necessary and normal activity of Arsenal selling a bench player entering his mid-career having completed his football development.
The contrast between the signings of Saliba and Kiwior tells the story. Both were signed at a young age for £25–30m, one is now a nailed on starter and one of the world's best centre halves, and one isn't and doesn't look like he will be.
The process of reproducing the football we're currently playing means eventually being able to replace both Saliba and Kiwior with equivalent or better players. An efficient way to do this is to promote a new player who might become "the next Saliba" into Kiwior's role.
That is, in fact, who Kiwior himself was meant to be. And Kiwior effectively replaced Rob Holding, which was in retrospect a great move—except we dwelt way too long on Holding, which is what we risk doing with Kiwior.
The resource overheads of deal-making are salient but they're the least difficult piece of the puzzle. With all due respect to administrative labour, Arsenal can draft new bean-counters, MBAs, contract lawyers and transfer schmoozers far more easily than elite centre halves.
Meanwhile we need to contend with other factors—Madrid are pursuing Saliba, Gabriel is injured etc. These are the real factors militating against Kiwior's sale, but if Saliba has his new contract and Gabriel's on the mend, it makes retaining Kiwior's sale as an option—pending the availability of a suitable contender for his role—a wise position.
This is particularly the case this summer, because it's the contingency of Gabriel's horror injury that has inflated Kiwior's minutes and made his quality evident to potential buyers for the past six months.
