What’s Happening? Saliba and other reserves

By Matty Sadler
October 29 2020

  A lot of Arsenal fans on Twitter overhype players based on very little. The best example of this is Rob Holding, who I feel gets massively overrated largely because he once pointed at his own head in front of Diego Costa in a cup final.  

Another two examples are Reiss Nelson and William Saliba.

Nelson had a very good October/ November on loan in Germany, and is best friends with Jadon Sancho, so this is why I think many online overrate him. I like Nelson. I think he'll have a good career in the game, though not necessarily here (unless he starts getting more of a chance!). For most of last season I thought he looked overawed, like the shirt was a little too big for him, though he did look better nearer the end. We hear today that he turned down the chance to leave on loan to fight for his place here, but has only played 80 minutes this season. 72 of those minutes were against Leicester in the League Cup, where I thought he looked good. Admittedly I prefer Nelson from the right personally, but I can't for the life of me understand why Nketiah was preferred to him on the LW against Vienna.

Joe Willock made our joint-most appearances last season along with Aubameyang (44), but has hardly had a sniff this season. Now he certainly has a lot to improve on if he ever wants to be a regular starter, such as his passing and decision making, but he has natural power, a great engine, he carries the ball well and has that ]ability of getting into dangerous positions you can't always teach. He has the raw tools to be a player who could put up good goal-getting numbers, if given the chance. This isn't something you could say about the rest of our CMs.

Smith Rowe was my tip to be our breakout player this season. There is a hybrid #8/10-shaped gap in our midfield at the moment and there could be a great opportunity there for him - no Ozil and whenever we've tried using Ceballos further forward, under Emery, under Arteta last season or against Leicester, he has been ineffective AT BEST. He has to stay fit, but he could really surprise us.

I really hope we start to see more of these three, starting tomorrow evening. Not too optimistic about it as Arteta seems to be putting his faith firmly in experience, but at the moment we're so just so uninspiring.

I haven't been on the forum much so apologies if this was discussed elsewhere, but I find the Saliba situation a bit puzzling. As mentioned above, he gets overhyped a lot on Twitter by people who have never seen him play, largely because he came with a good reputation and simply isn't Mustafi/ Sokratis/ Luiz. I watched Saliba 4-6 times last season before lockdown and liked what I saw, but I was trying to cool expectation as I thought it was unrealistic to expect a 19 year old to come in and revolutionise our defence. I just don't understand what is happening with him. I saw him once in a first team friendly and once for our U23s, and in both games he looked way, way off the pace. I gather he has had some personal troubles and we were looking to loan him out, fair enough, but to not loan him out and then not name him in the Europa League squad? I just don't understand it. Also, Maitland-Niles, one of our stars post-restart, has disappeared of late as well. Unused sub in our last 3 games...

The only positive to being in the Europa League the last 4 years is we've been able to give vital minutes to youth players and young signings like Nelson, Willock, Nketiah, Saka, Smith Rowe, Guendouzi and Martinelli.

Discussion on this issue continues here…