Nuno Tavares' recent comments over his loan move to Marseille from Arsenal show that the young full-back has ignored the advice of Gunners boss Mikel Arteta.
The ex-Benfica defender was purchased for a relatively low-risk transfer fee of £7million last summer and initially impressed with his start to life at the Emirates. At one stage, Tavares was actually keeping first-choice left-back Kieran Tierney out of the Arsenal first-team in the build-up to the hectic festive fixture list.
However, things changed after Christmas and the turn of the new year brought arguably the lowest point of Tavares' career when he was hooked 30 minutes into Arsenal's third-round FA Cup defeat away at then-Championship outfit Nottingham Forest.
Four months later and Tavares was on the wrong end of another humiliating substitution 45 minutes into the 3-0 loss at Crystal Palace. By that time, it became clear the 22-year-old would benefit from a loan spell elsewhere and that is exactly what he got this summer with a temporary move to Ligue 1 side Marseille.
The defender has followed in the footsteps of current Gunners fan-favourite William Saliba, who spent last term at the Stade Velodrome and looks to have significantly benefitted from it judging the quality of the performances since his return.
With that in mind, it comes as somewhat of a shock that Tavares has since admitted he wanted to include an option to make his move to France permanent instead of the straight loan contract he signed.
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"At Arsenal, I do not know if it was a problem of competition with Kieran Tierney, but for me, that's not even the point," Tavares told French outlet RMC Sport.
"I came to Marseille to finally be able to play in my position. When signing with OM, I wanted to have an option to buy, but Arsenal refused. With my agents, we always wanted this purchase option, but Arsenal didn't.
"Now I'm at OM, and with or without an option, I'm happy. At Arsenal, I would have probably only played in the cup. I came to Marseille to play in my position, in the Champions League, in the league and in the cup [competition]. Marseille gave me this opportunity."
Tavares has proven he clearly didn't want to spend time at a crucial developmental stage of his career battling for minutes with Tierney and summer-signing Oleksandr Zinchenko, presumably to the disappointment of Arteta if his comments from April are anything to go by.
The Spaniard called on Tavares to "embrace" the challenge of dislodging Tierney from his place. "Throughout your career, you have to go through really difficult moments," Arteta said. "He had some really good periods when he arrived at the club and was playing many more minutes than he was probably expecting."
Arteta went on to cite how the competition element of jostling for positions at Arsenal could actually help improve Tavares.
"He needs the rhythm, the competition and the understanding with his teammates. We have to help him to achieve this but during a game, you have to decide if something can change the game to make things better.
