Mikel Arteta revealed on Wednesday that it ‘hurt’ him to omit William Saliba from Arsenal’s Europa League squad.
The Gunners are very light on centre-back options for tonight’s visit of Dundalk, but the 19-year-old Frenchman is ineligible.
Arteta claimed that he had a lot of central defenders at the time of Saliba’s omission – and he’s right.
But the Spaniard could and perhaps should have acknowledged that he also decided to leave out Sokratis Papastathopoulos.
The Greek powerhouse is, like Saliba, a centre-back and Arteta also failed to include him in the squad, along with Mesut Ozil.
Ozil has been making a lot of noise in recent weeks after being frozen out of both the Europa League and the Premier League selections, mainly on Twitter.
But the former Borussia Dortmund stalwart has gone about his business quietly and with an element of class and professionalism that he deserved to have recognised.
The truth is that the 38-year-old manager made a clear mistake in omitting Saliba, but the same is true of Sokratis – who would have started tonight – and he can’t sing the blues over one player while pretending the other doesn’t exist.
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