Arsenal star William Saliba recently took to social media to send out a message after the end of the season, in which the highly-rated talent was loaned out to Nice for the second-half of the campaign.
Saliba admitted that it has been a season with ‘a lot of learning’ after a campaign in which the centre-back started out with a frustrating lack of action, that also involved some personal controversy.
The 20-year-old insisted that he is ‘looking forward’ to next season, with Arsenal fans out there certainly hoping that Saliba is finally afforded a chance for the Gunners.
Saliba was recruited for a big-money fee of £27m in the summer 0f 2019, per BBC Sport, but spent that season on loan with boyhood club Saint-Etienne before officially arriving at Arsenal for this season.
Unfortunately, Saliba is yet to make his first-team debut for the Gunners despite high expectations, as well as the sloppy performances of some of the North London outfit’s defenders this season.
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“It was a season with a lot of learning, I’m looking forward to the next season, see you all soon.” (Praying Hands Emoji)
Saliba was actually robbed of the chance to make his debut and prove his worth for the second-half of the season when Mikel Arteta snubbed the ace with false registration rules in mind, an absolute mess of a situation from the boss and relevant staff members.
The talent ultimately returned to his homeland in January for a loan spell with Nice, which is a when Saliba started to aim some pretty high-profile digs at Arteta.
Saliba was convinced that he wasn’t even offered the ‘chance’ to ‘rediscover’ his ‘rhythm’ after ‘immediately’ being labelled unready, perhaps harshly when considering the curtailment of the 19/20 Ligue 1 season.
The centre-back didn’t let the matter rest there either as he later told a French television show that Arteta ‘judged’ him based off of just ‘two-and-a-half matches’.
At least the campaign didn’t end on a sour note for Saliba, the defender scored in Nice’s final game of the season.
As deserving of a first-team chance at Arsenal the big-money man may be, Saliba has made his task more difficult himself with public criticism of Arteta – something he should be hoping the Spaniard doesn’t hold a grudge over.
I and many other.Arsenal fans were annoyed that Saliba was loaned out to accommodate Luiz. This you can imagine was Arteta influenced by Edu unworried that no one else has a grip of things football. We have Chief executive called Vankesham(excuse spelling) and I hear he was a furniture salesmanager and you can imagine what he does there owing to limited knowledge of football.
Now that he is returning, I hope we should have more you get players so Mavropanos should be returned to avoid overplaying and subsequent injuries to regulars.
I hope we can turn around and bounce back to reclaim our name of comeback boys.
It is a misconception that defending has been the problem for arsenal this season. Statistically we had the third best defence in the league. It was a lack of creativity and not being clinical in front of goal that’s cost us this season. If this is addressed in the summer I don’t think we will be far from the top four. It will be close, other teams above us will invest heavily again, but I remain upbeat about our chances if arteta is given the significant funds required to close the gap.