Spending £50m on White will go down as one of the most stupid, overly indulgent decisions Arteta has made.
Normally, I’d say fair enough if Saliba didn’t have a ball playing skill set the coach needs for his system but he did and Arteta just didn’t care.
If a immediate return to CL football wasn’t on the agenda why not invest that playing time into a blue chip prospect? Is that not the basis of the project?
If there was no target set for Arteta, and no pressure like Edu said…
Then we should have kept Saliba and let him develop here in the EPL, not in France.
If we need to make certain position, then it is another story IMO.
I can see Saliba initially being a backup option to Tomiyasu in addition to getting rotational minutes at CB.
Given how we use Tomi as a more defensive RB, there are some similarities to playing RCB in a three like he did at Marseille. I think he has the passing and ball carrying skills to do it. And it would be a good way to introduce him to the pace and intensity of the PL while also putting him in a position where mistakes can be less important than at CB.
I like this
Here’s some clips from Saliba last night, kid honestly still looks raw as fuck. People need to relax and realize it’s going to take some time and patience for him to become half the player the media has made you believe he is. Wouldn’t even suprise me if Holding features more than him next season.
He’s obviously talented but the hype is just too much.
What?! 
If we had gone into this season with Saliba as first choice CB with Gab and we had missed out on 4th you’d all be going fucking mental at the fact that we relied on an unproven 19 year old with no PL experience instead of buying a PL proven ball player coming off the back of a strong season at Brighton.
Arteta is damned if you do damned if you don’t with you guys haha
A fair comment from Reddit:
OP·3 min. ago
Bear in mind this is international football, a group of players that have never played together before and likely have no chemistry, a few times Saliba was completely out of sync with his teammates while trying to play the offside trap(forgetting he isn’t at Marseille). Don’t read too much into this is what i’m saying.
Who has overhyped Big Willie?
Yet I don’t know how many times I’ve read on here that international football is just glorified farmers football played at a pace that make Xhaka look world class.
Which while that isn’t entirely untrue it’s still funny how it changes when it’s a player people want to succeed.
Hahaha this really is the theme these days isn’t it
Bit of a loose hypothetical tbh, my reaction would depend on the player’s performance level in relation to the overall performance of the team. Impossible to say who’d be going mental without a sample
Arteta, Edu and the club have repeated lowered expectations and confirmed CL was not the goal this season so I suspect most people would rationalise the failure by citing a young inexperinced squad with scope to improve
Not really, he deserves to be called out his mismanagement of resources
Signing Ramsdale to replace Leno maybe harsh but it’s a more logical transfer than signing White
Ben White is a good centre-back but the difference in ability between him and Saliba isn’t exactly huge.
If Arsenal put that money towards a central-midfielder, I think that would have had a greater impact on the team.
Fair point - It doesn’t even address who tf Arteta is in the first place to warrant such a high level of control to shred millions off assets in pursuit of his ideal system
I think we all just want this sort out ASAP and move on for the summer.
Having him or selling him, I don’t give a fuck anymore.
Just give me good, exciting, attractive football.
The way a lot of our fanbase is they probably would have turned on Saliba, even if the talent was there but lack of consistency meant a bum performance every few matches or so, because in truth they are stupid and their own worst enemy at times, but that’s how it is, and so it was right to protect Saliba, sending him on loan for one more season. Personally, Tapsoba was my first choice, but White has been fine.
I don’t know why people keep bringing up the same argument with stats around goals conceded, etc. This has been addressed many times. If you want to blame White, go ahead, but a more reasoned analysis will look at first choice full backs being injured a lot, with not great cover, and our CM still pretty weak and in need of reinforcements also.
They ‘turned’ on Ben White early on when he was dominated by Ivan Toney and had a few ropey outings over the next couple of games. Fans will always be reactive and defenders will always make mistakes.
Yep.
I always hear about fans supporting our youngsters and understanding mistakes will be made. Like fuck they are, even our very talented crop right now gets criticism, just like the previous ones did.
Defenders get it worse too because costly mistakes at the back are easy to pick on. Ask almost every defender that played for Arsenal the past years. Pretty much all of them are deemed clowns by now.
The media would be on him as well setting the narrative, a bit how like they tried to do with White but failed. Not sure how 20 year old Saliba in his first full season playing in England would have dealt with it.
You see the majority want us to sign a new winger to start over ESR and Martinelli down the left this summer, there would probably be calls for us to sign a new centre back to start over Saliba.
It ain’t Vidic / Rio dude so it’s certainly possible, we conceded just shy of 50 goals and didn’t keep a clean sheet in our last 11 matches.
Decent CB pairing but by no means a top class one.
Agreed, but I think they have potential to become a top class pairing, especially given their age.
As for Saliba, am really hoping he’ll hit the ground running but I won’t be surprised if he still is very raw, isn’t very disciplined and relies more on his physical attributes to overcome defensive shortcomings.
Supposedly being offered a new long term contract now, so it seems all of the bitching and moaning about us not wanting him and we are gonna let him jump for nothing could very well be premature. (Lequipe)
from some random internet news, our club may offer a straight swap of Saliba for Tielemans