This makes me question his ambition a bit in general and certainly his ambition to make it at Arsenal in particular.
A player with the drive to win a place at Arsenal, or even the simple drive to just flip double birds at Arteta for not giving him enough of a chance, would stay in England and try to remind the club every week what he could do, even if it meant doing it at Newcastle or Crystal Palace or wherever.
Arteta has made it clear that he rates all the other CB’s we have above Saliba so what is his incentive to stay here?
Another illustration of Arteta’s lack of man management skills.
He would have played regularly if he went to a club like Palace.
I like the Marseille loan just because of the manager but I don’t see how staying in Ligue 1 can be all that ideal for his development. He has already shown he can be a pretty good player in a farmer’s league where most weeks he plays against mediocre opponents. He took the easy way out.
Marseille is playing at a higher level, they have a better squad, play better football and have better coaching with EL involvement. Do you really want him to waste his time at shitters like Palace and Newcastle just because the PL is falsely perceived to have more league wide quality?
Gotta drop this farmer’s league line, Ligue 1 is a conveyer belt of talent the PL milks.
Playing for a club like Marseille is not the “easy way out” either much harder loan in terms of expectations than anything compared to bottom half PL clubs.
I agree Marseille is a bigger and better club than Palace or Newcastle. But the opponents matter. He will face much tougher competition on a weekly basis in the Premier League than in France. Much tougher in the Premier League than in the Europa League either. And he has played in Ligue 1 plenty. Its not like he is coming from Macedonia or something and its all new to him either way.
Maybe he just had a really good feeling about the setup at Marseille and I can understand why having the confidence of the manager would be important to him given what he has been through. I don’t think its a bad loan. But I do think its disappointing that he wasn’t willing to take a risk and show the club what he could do in the Premier League.
I mean with the kind of thinking being shown in this thread, we’d have to loan Aouar out to Brighton for a season if we bought him just make sure he could play in the PL
If he geuninely thought he had a shot then perhaps he’d take such a leap of faith but he knows he won’t get a look in under the chuckle brothers so who can blame him?
The whole premier league proven tripe is one of the most overused and redundant lines out there. The premier league is largely made up of foreign talent anyway, with the vast majority of top players being foreign.
You can move from one premier league club to another and flop. You can move from abroad and flop. Conversely, you can move from a European club to the premier league and be a resounding success.
Saliba stands to develop his game at a club like Marseille playing for a prestigious French club with European football to boot under a good manager. Playing for premier league relegation fodder is effectively playing in a championship quality team that’s going to struggle in most games. I’d rather he learned to ply his trade in a proactive and progressive team.
The point isn’t that he needs to be PL proven, but they asked him to get out of his comfort zone and show he could perform in a different league with different tactical and physical requirements and he seems to have said no.
I think there is a lot to like about the Marseille loan, especially the manager. I have said that from the beginning. But if he was really driven to make it at Arsenal he would have tried to show he could it in the PL.
@Darkseid has a totally reasonable point though that he may just not be thinking about a future at Arsenal anymore.
He said no and for good reason. Since he’s been here the dirt pounder has fucked him all around and derailed the kids career. If I were him I’d tell Mikel to fuck right off as well and go where I wanted. Good on William, poor kid got bought by a fucking dead club but he won’t allow them to ruin his career at least.