Even if it’s true, to be honest I can understand it. The opportunities to get winners medals and play in cup finals are quite limited. I couldn’t blame him if he is a bit upset over it.

Was it socrates who mentioned at the time that it’s feasible the incident may have weakened the strength of Saliba’s affinity with Arsenal? If it wasn’t socrates, I know somebody did.

Whoever it was, at the time I could see the logic of their point.

Less than £27m but the club record signing for Cardiff City at £15m sadly never got to play for them. Quite grisly.

Who was it and what was the reason?

EDIT: Just looked it up. Emiliano Sala who died in a plane crash just two days after joining Cardiff.

In our present form, I at least expect us to go to Leicester and put up a stern fight no matter the result. At this point, I'd take a point and be happy. If we lose, it better be a hard fought, bitter 2-1 or 1-0 loss. It won't make most fans happy no matter how well we play (some fans would still complain at a hard fought 1-0 loss at Liverpool from a deflected, lucky goal), but for me it does. In the glory days we would sometimes be off our game and still win. Those days are gone. Going forward, I'm expecting us to win most of the games from the teams below us and next to us in the table and get more draws than losses from the top of the table.

But did Cardiff actually pay all, or indeed any, of that £15m fee? I seem to recall they tried to wriggle out of paying. Wasn't their finest moment as a club.

I mentioned Elneny as a partner for Partey to potentially provide the best balance for the team, not necessarily because I thought he was the best player. It was a reaction to Arteta playing the 4-3-3 and effectively emptying the midfield. I don’t want to see Partey as the sole holding midfield.
In my view Elneny is the only mid we have currently available whose natural game is simply sitting in front of the back 4 and breaking things up. I think Partey and Lokonga are better going box to box, as is AMN. But having seen Elneny and AMN in the same team for 90 mins I think the talent of the players in this instance would come above the natural balance of the team.
Having Elneny as 5th choice mid may be seen as fine for squad depth but really that only depends on how good your first 4 CM are. If we have aspirations to be top 4 I think we need another quality addition in central midfield. I don’t think it is beyond realism for Arsenal to sign a midfielder and move on Elneny and really strengthen that area of the pitch for the squad.

Why not?

I was aware you were speaking of the balance of the team when pushing for Elneny’s inclusion against Villa. I also don’t think it’s beyond realism for Arsenal to sign another midfielder to strengthen that area of the pitch and move on Elneny. However, with Lacazette presumably moving on for free next summer and Aubameyang arguably past his best (he’ll be 32 next season), I think it’s debatable whether it’ll be the biggest priority.

However what Saliba stated, looking forward to the rescheduled match between Nice and Marseille from August 22 with gusto.

I would be that d******* too if I was in his position. Imagine the opportunity to win a French Cup Winners medal at such an age? It must mean a lot more to him since this is his domestic cup final, and I'm sure he grew up being wowed by these finals, and dreamt of being in one too.

I've always been beating this drum. To me, simple logic. An opportunity of a lifetime for one so young taken away. Absolutely no empathy from Arsenal there. And he was doing very well during that stage for his club.

I see the relevance of your point that a young French player would consider it important to play in the French cup final gooner7. As a sense of occasion it may not have the international reputation of the FA Cup final. But a young French lad trying to make his way in the game must surely, I’d have thought, want to play in it.

What I do question more is the relevance in the post you replied to that Saint-Etienne lost the final anyway. They lost it 1-0. There are many games with close scores where it appears realistic to suggest the result could have been changed if a player from any position with either club had played instead of having missed it.

If Lionel Messi at his Barcelona peak had played for Manchester United in their last game, it was so one sided Liverpool would still probably have won. But a single goal margin is not, I suggest, a wide enough margin to say Saliba wouldn’t have possibly changed the result.

Hi Bernard, I was not suggesting the inclusion of Saliba would have changed the result. That remains unknown. What I am referring to is the opportunity of being in a cup final, especially one that is dear to him ( big assumption, though not difficult to assume so).

The glory of walking out with thousands of cheering fans. And playing in a revered cup final. Priceless!

Edit: Just re-read my post. Perhaps I should not have used the word "win". Though the word "opportunity" would put context to the sentence.

It's worth remembering that the circumstances behind Saliba not appearing in that game were a bit complicated. If I've got my facts straight, St Etienne got a bit greedy, wanting him to play in that match as well as demanding a bonus payment from us that we had no obligation to pay.

https://arseblog.news/2020/07/puel-sali ... nce-final/

Jesus the Saffers dropping their best cricketer because he won't take the knee.

Goals conceded and clean sheets in each teams last 20 games.
Half our our goals conceded over the last 20 came in the opening 3 games of the season.
There has undeniably been an upturn to our defensive solidity, some may say that has come a downturn in creativity, goals and general entertainment.

Man U have 1 clean sheet in their last 20

Wow, this is great to know. Very heart warming

Or was it Arsenal who wanted $2mil from St. Etienne to extend Saliba's loan? Or some insurance requirement in case of injury stuff?

What I heard was technically Saliba’s loan was up in terms of timescale because the season was extended due to covid. A lot of teams extended those loan deals and Arsenal were willing to do the same for Saliba so he could play in the cup final. There was a clause in the loan deal that if Saliba played 25 games (I can’t recall the exact number) and at the time Saliba had played 24. St Etienne wanted Srsenal to extend the loan AND pay the extra fee for the privilege!

Here's a mad, rash, out of the box suggestion. We could...hmmm....er....ah...actually have him play for us? Crazy, I know, just a suggestion.

That clears that

I'm looking forward to the Leicester game. I believe Arteta will begin to set the team up for faster forward play nowadays. He has seen what the team can do.

I’m not denying that’s what happened but it seems an unusual way to conduct loan deals. Most of the loan deals where you hear of payments between the clubs involve a fee being paid by the borrowing club (in this case Saint-Etienne) to the parent club (in this case Arsenal).

In my simplistic terms I’ve seen it as a sort of one year (or however long the loan deal is for) transfer fee, even though the registration of the player’s club won’t permanently change.

I can understand that with youngsters (as Saliba was and still is) the parent club may be eager to see him get minutes on the pitch for the sake of his development as a player. But if he doesn’t, isn’t that one indication of his potential? Also, isn’t it more common for the parent club to have the right to recall the player if he’s not playing much? I don’t know but I thought there was a more known case of this happening.

Was it Nketiah at Leeds? I remember he went there for a year and was recalled by Arsenal (or maybe released by Leeds) after about half a season. I don’t know the reason or how often he was playing for Leeds. But if it wasn’t Nketiah, I’m sure there will be other examples.

As I said earlier, what Rich said may well have been the case with Saliba. I’m just saying it seems a bit odd that if there was no payment either way between Saint-Etienne and Arsenal for Saliba’s first 24 games there, Arsenal suddenly become obliged to pay Saint-Etienne €2.5m (the total I saw reported which equates to around £2.1m at current exchange rates) when he plays his 25th game (or whatever the number of games and payment total were supposed to be).

Leicester will be a proper test of where we are as a team. They are obviously not at City or Liverpools level but on their day can be a match for anyone.

We failed the Brighton test in terms of putting our stamp on the game and were lucky to come away with a point, even though we get brownie points for hanging in there.

Tomorrow we have to go toe-to-toe with them, try to dominate the midfield and create chances whilst being resolute defensively. Not an easy task but its the sort of challenge we have to meet head on if we have aspirations to become a top four side again.

I don’t like us being the early or late Saturday kick off away from home. Maybe it’s my selective memory but we never seem to do well in these sorts of games. The home crowd always seem way more up for it when it’s not your big standard Saturday 3pm game, and that often transmits itself to the intensity of the home team and lack of intensity from us.

The big question mark over us is can we play with the pace, high press and intensity away from home - against anyone. We seem to enjoy doing this with our own fans roaring us on, but I’ve not seen it away from home

The first 5 to 10 minutes will tell us what kind of game we'll see from this squad.

For those who wondered why Ødegaard didn’t play in the last game, apparently he was injured. Arteta said he hopes he’ll be fit enough to play a part today.

That’s curious. At the time he was reported as having a ‘bug’ - similar to Ben White.

Hi chaps

On my last visit to the Emirates I was disappointed to find that The Quality Fish Bar at Finsbury Park is no more. Anyone know what happened to it? Any recommendations for an alternative? (Eat-in, not takeaway and preferably Finsbury Park side of the stadium)

Thanks

Oh joy. Michael Oliver again.

Perhaps it was a bug. Sorry, if you’d asked me why White missed the game too I’d have probably said ‘injured’. No doubt it’s me failing to distinguish between injury and illness.

Maybe I should say ‘out’ in future?

I actually think he’s the Premier League’s best ref.

Strong team. If we put in the same effort from the last two games we have a good chance of getting a win today.

First time I ever heard the name Wrexham was an article I read when I first starte watching British football and they were mentioned as giant killers in the FA cup. We all know who the giant was. Had no idea they were even Welsh.

This is interesting though, I like Ryan Reynolds as an actor. Not sure how he'll be as an owner but wish him an them all the best. Would like to know more than this article is saying about how it all came about.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ryan-reynolds-goal-wrexham-premier-083711020.html

I think that’s probably our best 11 at the club except Tierney for Tavares.

Some days the Lacazette Aubameyang thing won’t work and you will see idiots on the internet saying “Arteta knows this doesn’t work blah blah blah “ but it seems to have the most balance and combination of threat and stability.

Home to Sunderland in the Carabao

Looking forward to the game. A proper test of our credentials.

I wouldn't say I'm confident but I am optimistic that we can win today.

If we fail to turn up attacking-wise, like against Brighton, then it will be back to the drawing board.

Best draw we could have had.