The stats behind William Saliba’s latest impressive Marseille showing as Arsenal’s defence continues to flounder
Arsenal’s awful start
Arsenal’s 2021/22 Premier League campaign has got off to an absolute nightmare start.
The Gunners would begin their season against newly-promoted Brentford, who had never played a single game in the Premier League before this season.
The Bees, though, were able to take advantage of some poor Arsenal defending, especially from Ben White and Pablo Mari, to earn a 2-0 win.
Mari was then completely dominated by Romelu Lukaku as Chelsea picked up a 2-0 win in the Gunners’ second game of the campaign.
Mari would then be dropped for the Manchester City clash on Saturday, with Arteta opting for a rather strange back-three of Sead Kolasinac, Rob Holding and Calum Chambers.
Chambers was especially poor on the day and was largely at fault for the opening goal by Ilkay Gundogan.
Arsenal would eventually lose 5-0 to Man City, meaning they have failed to win all of their first three games of a top-flight season for the first time since 1954/55:
For the fourth time in their history, Arsenal have failed to win each of their first three games to start a top-flight league season:
◉ 1921/22
◉ 1923/24
◉ 1954/55
◉ 2021/22Ouch. pic.twitter.com/kTNaiVd5CY
— Squawka Football (@Squawka) August 28, 2021
Saliba impresses for Marseille
Whilst Arsenal continue to flounder, one of their loanees is enjoying a superb start to his season in France.
20-year-old William Saliba has been loaned to Marseille for the course of this season.
The centre-back has so far started in all four of their Ligue 1 ties this campaign, including their win over Saint Etienne on Saturday.
On the back of that showing, Saliba’s impressive stats for the game have come to light.
The stats, taken from SofaScore, can be seen below and paint much more impressive picture than anything we have seen from Arsenal’s woeful centre-backs this season.
Did Arsenal make a mistake loaning Saliba out?
William Saliba vs Saint-Étienne last night:
•5 clearances
•1 tackle
•1 interception
•8 duels won (80% success)
•94 passes (96% accuracy)
•2 long balls (100% accuracy)
•6 dribbles (100% accuracy)
•0 errors leading to shots
•0 times dribbled pastBaller. pic.twitter.com/soVwo5IVGA
— Patrick Timmons (@PatrickTimmons1) August 29, 2021
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