Ignoring the claims that Nuno Tavares was the player thrown out of Marseille’s training for a lack of effort, the Arsenal loanee’s situation already wasn’t great in the south of France.
Despite a lot of criticism, the left-back was backed by his manager, Igor Tudor, recently, but that wasn’t enough to stop the media from going after him.
The latest in a long list of journalists and pundits having a go at the Arsenal defender was Walid Acherchour, who spoke to RMC Sport about the player, relayed by Le10 Sport.
Regarding the left-back’s future at Marseille, he made himself clear: “Once again, I wouldn’t keep him. Even though everything he’s done shouldn’t be thrown away, far from it. The big problem is if they qualify for the Champions League. That’s the level. During the big games and the Champions League game, Nuno Tavares hasn’t been great. We’ve seen that his weaknesses can be hidden by Marseille dominating, where he could get away with it.
“But when there’s been big games, Champions League, against PSG, his technical issues were obvious in the final pass and especially defensively, it was very, very complicated.”
Acherchour then suggested to Pablo Longoria that he could find himself a better left-back than the Arsenal man in Serie A somewhere, making it clear he wasn’t a fan of the idea of Marseille throwing money at the Gunners to keep the player around.
There is no option to buy in the deal that loaned Tavares to Marseille, meaning any negotiation about a permanent stay would need to be started from scratch.
At this point, who knows what his valuation really is, but it’s clear that the Ligue 1 side wouldn’t be in favour of overpaying for a player who hasn’t fully convinced this season, unlike William Saliba last year.
