Personally, I wouldn’t do it without at least looking at Saliba in pre-season.
And I do highly question the club’s treatment of Saliba in general.
All that said, its completely plausible to me that Saliba is not at all ready to be our starting RCB next year. The examples of 20-year-old CBs starting and playing at a high level for top teams in the Premier League can probably be counted on one hand with fingers left over. Just because Fofana did it (largely playing in a three man defense mind you) doesn’t mean much of anything about that larger trend.
In that case, we’re buying White because Luiz left, our only other true option for starting RCB is Holding, and playing Holding much of the year could ruin our season.
Just looked on the Brighton forum to see what they’re saying
Does Ben White want to go to Arsenal? Mid table Arsenal. Its obviously a step up from us surely he could see that if he holds out for better offers or had another good season with us then it’ll be City/Liverpool/United/Chelsea making offers.
Generally they don’t want to sell Ben White, but they’d rather sell him than Bissouma.
I think he is better on the ball than all our CBs barring Saliba maybe, who we haven’t seen play for us in a while. I also think he is very solid in defence too.
Judging from the profile we’re targeting with Onana, Raya and others for goalkeepers it’s clear that we want our defence to be far more productive when we attack.
RB and CB were priorities for this very reason.
I just don’t believe rumours any more. Majority of it is just clickbait. Or agents trying to generate interest because their client wants an improved contract.
If we’re going back with an improved offer then it’s definitely us who are mad and not them!
Struggling to get my head around it, but if this is happening I’m going to try and see the positive side and assume for the time being that this is an indication that this could be a big window for us.
Cos spaffing this much at the start of the window on someone like him would be a mad thing to do if you weren’t still going to go out and properly address more important issues. I wouldnt put it past us to do that, obviously, but for my mental wellbeing I have to believe there’s a solid plan for our transfer business lol
Bell has a perfect track record so far. One of the few that actually don’t comment if they don’t have any news.
I think you’re right on the rest. Ornstein, Romano, Watts, Wheatley have been suspect of being fed news by agents and getting it wrong every once in a while.
Signing him basically means we’re cutting our (substantial) losses with the Saliba project. You don’t sign a guy slightly older with arguably less experience and pretend Saliba has a future here.
And for the people saying that Saliba is too young or lacks the experience I’d question whether Ben White has any better experience at 23? Okay he played the Championship, is that more relevant experience than Saliba starting as a teenager in Ligue 1?
White just started 36 matches in the Premier League last season so he definitely has better experience in terms of his readiness to play in the Premier League this season.
Just from a standpoint of physical readiness, Saliba also has never actually played anything close to a full season of first team football, regardless of the level. His highest is 2100 minutes last season (largely our fault for that of course) and the previous two years he only played around 1500. White has played full seasons of 3700, 4100, and 3200 minutes.
I am disappointed that we are (seemingly) not giving Saliba a chance but the idea that he could just walk into the team and be our reliable starting RCB and play 3500 minutes or whatever is a big leap.
I can see that argument. Just seems like the club are looking at White as more of a sure thing when really I don’t know that he is. All transfers come with risk. We just seem to be flailing atm.
