Saturday was, by all accounts, an absolute disaster for Arsenal and Mikel Arteta.
Not only did Granit Xhaka get sent off in a 5-0 demolition away to Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium, but William Saliba had a stormer out on loan a few hours later.
This is particularly relevant because Arteta fielded a three-man defence of Sead Kolasinac – a left-back – Calum Chambers and Rob Holding against the Premier League champions.
And it just wasn’t a good look for the Arsenal boss, considering that Saliba, whom he loaned to Marseille, is probably a better centre-back than all three and his show-stopping display against Saint Etienne yesterday illustrated as much.
But in a cruel twist for the Spaniard, Konstantinos Mavropanos, the other centre-back loaned out this summer after being deemed not good enough by Arteta, only went and scored his frst goal for Stuttgart in a 3-2 defeat.
Here’s how some Arsenal fans are responding to Mavropanos’s post-match tweet:
More bad news
That the 23-year-old found himself on the scoresheet is yet another horrible piece of news for Arsenal and its senior figures, the people who decide which players are sold, kept and loaned out.
The Emirates Stadium club clearly made a catastrophic error in this regard because it’s so difficult to argue that both Saliba and Mavropanos wouldn’t have started against Manchester City had they been available and maybe, just maybe, they would’ve performed better than Chambers, Kolasinac and Holding.
The Saliba situation is particularly unsettling because he’s been on the North Londoners’ books for two years and hasn’t yet made his senior debut.
Arteta didn’t use him once in the first half of last season and then loaned him to Nice in Ligue 1.
Even though he impressed back in his homeland, the 20-year-old was still considered surplus to requirements by the Arsenal boss upon his return and now he’s paying the penalty for that, with Arteta’s side rock bottom of the Premier League with zero points and zero goals scored after three games.
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
