It’s hard not to feel sorry for Arsenal’s William Saliba.
The 19-year-old joined the Gunners for £27 million in the summer of 2019 but fast forward 16 months, he hasn’t even made a senior debut yet.
He did, to be fair, spend last season on loan at Saint-Etienne, but he’s back at Arsenal now and his first-team prospects aren’t looking good at all.
Problem is, they’re about to get much worse.
Saliba is a central defender and Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta is about to get two pretty good ones back from long-term injury.
Arteta revealed on Wednesday that Calum Chambers – who hasn’t played since December of last year – is ‘very close’ to a return, while Pablo Mari, who’s managed 24 minutes since March, is back in training and played alongside Saliba for the reserves last week.
Both of their returns is good news or Arsenal, because a team like this can never have enough central defenders available, but it simply pushes Saliba further down the pecking order in a big, big way.
With December being a hectic month in terms of fixtures, the young Frenchman might have had an outside chance of a Premier League debut, depending on injuries and if Arteta rotated.
But with Chambers and Mari on the verge of coming back, he won’t be in the first XI – or perhaps even a squad – anytime soon.
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