Mikel Arteta looks as though he has executed his plan for defender William Saliba perfectly.
The Gunners signed Saliba in a £27million from Saint-Etienne in the summer of 2019, but the Frenchman is yet to play a single competitive first-team game for the north London club, having instead being sent out on loan for three spells in France with Saint-Etienne, Nice and Marseille, totalling 68 appearances in Ligue 1 across the last three seasons, winning Ligue’s Young Player of the Year award last year.
Saliba has been given minutes as part of the Gunners’ first-team in pre-season and it looks set to bolster his chances of a role for Arteta’s side in the upcoming 2022/23 campaign.
Following a 90 minute run-out in Arsenal ’s 4-0 victory over Chelsea in America in the early hours of Sunday morning, Arteta has said that Saliba now looks ready for first team involvement ahead of the new campaign.
“He looked ready to me today,” Arteta said. “We will keep developing him, he has a huge potential, he is already a top player and we have to make him even better.”
With Saliba now seemingly closer than ever to playing a big role for Arsenal in the future, it backs up Arteta’s long-term opinions and strategy over trying to get Saliba up to his potential quality before blooding him in at the Emirates Stadium.
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In January 2021, Arteta explained why he decided to loan out the now 21-year-old to Nice, highlighting a need for the young French prospect to prove his worth ahead of a breakthrough with the Gunners.
“I want to protect the player that we signed and the future we have alongside him and the best way to do that is to give him minutes to play,” continued Arteta.
“He is going to a really strong league as well, a league he knows really well, he has experience [there] and he needs to play as many games as possible to be ready for us from next season.”
Earlier this summer, Arteta said that it was likely that Saliba would once again leave on loan in this transfer window, suggesting that his pre-season performances have convinced Arteta to keep him around this season.
“He needs to come back. He has the experience and environment necessary to be competitive for us,” Arteta told RMC Sport. “If he had stayed with us this year, with a Premier League game per week with Ben White and Gabriel, he wouldn’t have had half the game time he got at Marseille, that’s certain.
“For his growth and what he can do next year, it wouldn’t have been good. William wasn’t with us because he wouldn’t have got the required time on the pitch to gain experience. That’s it, there’s nothing else.”
