For all the praise William Saliba has been receiving these days at Marseille, the Arsenal loanee had a night to forget on Wednesday.
Starting on the right-hand side of the defence against OGC Nice in the Coupe de France, the Gunners man was incredibly disappointing, at fault for the opponents equalising, which led to a 4-1 loss for Jorge Sampaoli’s men.
La Provence analysed his performance on Thursday morning and they didn’t mince their words, making it clear they were not impressed with what the young defender offered.
Pointing out he ‘lost the ball’ ahead of the first Nice goal, he was then ‘humiliated’ by Amine Gouiri, before being ‘completely passive’ for the fourth goal, at which point he’d been put back in the centre of the defence.
In fact, La Provence go as far as saying the Arsenal defender put forward a ‘catastrophic performance’, and even though such nights are ‘rather rare’ for him, it remains ‘disappointing’.
Still very young for his role, Saliba will want to bounce back as soon as possible, especially since the aim of this loan was to show Mikel Arteta he was ready to play at the Emirates next season.
While he has impressed hugely for the most part, he’ll need to work on eradicating such poor blips if he is to stand a chance with the Gunners going forward.
