William Saliba, one of the most mysterious and bizarre signing of Arsenal

Despite arriving to Arsenal as one of French football’s biggest promises, the reality is that William Saliba has struggle massively with the Gunners, but not because of his performances. His entire time at the Emirates has been filled with mystery and a disturbing lack of logic.

When Arsenal announced the signing of center-back William Saliba from St. Etienne in January of 2020 and let him there on loan for the remainder of last season, the perception was that they were getting one of France’s biggest young talents. Saliba was even described as the “Kylian Mbappe of center-backs”, hence why the English Premier League club was willing to pay 27 million pounds for his services.

But since the moment William Saliba arrived to London, the 19-year-old has weirdly isolated from the rest of the group. Manager Mikel Arteta didn’t register him for the first team for this English Premier League season and hasn’t given him any minutes in the other competitions. Considering that Arsenal has looked so poor on pretty much every single position so far this season, this raises a lot of understandable questions about why Saliba is not playing.

In fact, there was this situation of William Saliba losing a loved one in the summer and there was talk of him going on loan to a Ligue 1 team to be closer to his family, but that move failed to materialize, with him just playing two games with Arsenal’s Under-23s in recent months. Now there are rumors of him leaving Arsenal this month, whether on a loan deal or as a permanent transfer.

And the most mysterious thing is that there isn’t a clear answer why the Frenchman has been pushed aside by Mikael Arteta. Why invest such amount of money for a player you’re not going to use? Was the scout staff way off about their assessment of the player? Did he do something that Arteta thought it was unforgivable? We don’t know. However, it is definitely one of the weirdest situations in the English Premier League this season and a clear example of how things are going at the Emirates right now.