Martin Keown believes there will be undue pressure on new signing William Saliba to solve Arsenal’s defensive frailties.
A celebrated defender during his own playing career, Keown won three Premier League titles with the Gunners.
Recently however, there have been plenty of question marks over the Arsenal backline, which has shipped on average over 40 more goals across the past three Premier League seasons than their traditional top-six rivals.
Arsene Wenger, Unai Emery and now Mikel Arteta have been tasked with addressing the issue and the latter certainly is not spoilt for choice when all of his defenders are fit.
But plenty of hope is being placed on Saliba – a £27million signing from Saint-Etienne last summer.
As part of the deal, the 19-year-old remained on loan at the Stade Geoffroy-Guichard last season before linking up with his new club.
A number of injuries and the Ligue 1 season being curtailed by the coronavirus outbreak meant he played just 12 league games during the 2019/20 campaign and missed the Coupe de France final following a disagreement between the clubs on his treatment and training schedule.
Still a teenager and with a total of 28 league appearances to his name, Keown feels too much may be expected from Saliba when he first pulls on an Arsenal shirt.
Asked if he felt there was undue pressure on the France Under-20 international, Keown told the PA news agency: “There definitely is.
“It is one of those where I would have been happier if Arsenal had paid more money and brought him in straight at the start of last season.
“There have long-been questions over the Arsenal defence and Saliba was expensive, but he is also young and has not played that many professional games.
“It can’t be expected that he will walk straight into Arsenal, right into the team and be on it from the off.”
Arsenal have been linked with further defensive additions in recent weeks, including Gabriel Magalhaes of Lille and former Nice player Malang Sarr.
But, with the likes of Saliba, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Rob Holding, Calum Chambers, Pablo Mari, David Luiz and Shkodran Mustafi – as well as Kieran Tierney and Sead Kolasinac – all vying for spots in the Gunners’ defence when fit and available, Keown feels some of the current crop will need moving on before Arteta is allowed to add to his resources.
“There are eight or nine central defenders contracted to the football club,” Keown, talking as an ambassador for McDonald’s Grassroots Football Awards, added.
“So there is almost a team of central defenders and obviously Arteta can’t retain all of them so some of them should be moved out – even if some are currently injured now.
Today is the start of a new challenge at the next stage of my career!
I’m excited about the Arsenal project and am grateful to the management team at the club for all their efforts and their trust in me. pic.twitter.com/n4CnuHc4xJ
— Willian (@willianborges88) August 14, 2020
“Arteta might not feel he can shift any of those defenders this summer but the board will probably tell him he has to get rid of players in that position if he wants to sign a new centre-back.”
With former head of football Raul Sanllehi leaving the club on Saturday, the footballing decisions at the Emirates Stadium will now rest with Arteta and technical director Edu.
A new defender may yet arrive to join fellow new recruit Willian, who joined on a free transfer from Chelsea on Friday, while a new deal for captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is expected to be announced by the end of the week.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here