Last night in the Papa John’s Trophy, Arsenal’s Under-21 side beat Gillingham’s Under-21s on penalties after a 1-1 draw in normal time.
Among those to line up in the freshly-named competition was William Saliba, a man whose time at Arsenal hasn’t exactly gone to plan right now.
The Frenchman was signed by Unai Emery in a deal worth £27 million, but was loaned back to AS Saint-Etienne for another season.
However, that year of development wasn’t too fruitful, as injuries and the pandemic limited Saliba to just 17 appearances in all competitions.
Things have been worse this year. The Gunners failed to find him another loan move, and Arteta was forced to leave the 19-year-old out of his Premier League squad due to the sheer amount of centre-backs he has.
As quoted by talkSPORT, the Spaniard described that decision as a ‘painful’ one.
‘At the moment, with the amount of central defenders we have in the team, we had to leave him out of the squad, which is painful. Now we have some injuries and we could have used him but this is part of the profession.’
While a lack of first-team football isn’t ideal, Saliba is at least playing Under-21 football where he was photographed looking switched on against Gillingham.
The teenager was lining up alongside Calum Chambers, another player who has fallen foul to the huge amount of central defenders in Arteta’s squad.
It must be hugely frustrating for the Gunners to see the £40,000-a-week (Spotrac) Frenchman’s development caused so much turbulence in these unprecedented times.
Hopefully, the whole situation hasn’t affected him too much, and he will be raring to go next season when Arteta might’ve offloaded a more seasoned centre-back or two from his squad.
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