Arsenal returned to the summit of the Premier League table with their win over Nottingham Forest. Despite the high-scoring result, the unsung heroes of the match continued to be the Gunners’ back four.
In particular, both Ben White and William Saliba shone with their composed and strong defending of the Forest counterattacks when they came. The latter remains locked in discussions over a new Arsenal contract and The Athletic report that an official offer from the club has now been made.
For Saliba, he faces the decision of considering if Arsenal remain the right club for him to continue his development. Fears over a lack of playing time have been well and truly quashed as he has started every Premier League game throughout this table-topping season so far.
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He himself stated in a long interview featured in the Arsenal programme that he wanted to take the Gunners back to the top. Stating his commitment to a side he had supported since he was a kid.
“Yes, now I want to win everything,” he states. “I want to help the club to come back to the very top. I will give everything for this club to help us get back there.
"It has been hard for me as well at times at Arsenal, not playing all the time, but sometimes sport is like this. You don’t only have good moments – it’s part of life. That’s all in the past. Now I’m just focused on the present and on the future. I want to do my best for Arsenal and keep improving and working hard every day.”
From Mikel Arteta’s perspective, he knows where he wants to take the club and that, like Saliba says, is back to the top. Winning titles and trophies, awaken the sleeping giant that Arsenal football club slowly became.
“When I go to the dressing room when I walk around the building, and I see there’s really a sense of family and they [people who work for Arsenal] describe it as a sense of family. What it means for them to work for the club, to participate in this journey together.
"At the moment, this is a very different club, and that's an incredible credit that everybody has to take from the top of [the] club to every player because we did that together. The next step is - now we have the foundation - to win. And we are building a team to win."
With both Saliba and Arteta’s mindsets on the club aligning and their aims looking to elevate the club back to its elite competitive status, there is a hope that a contract should be able to be agreed upon. Financially, Saliba is a far greater asset than this current wage suggests and finding a figure the three parties (player, club, agent) agree upon will be the next challenge.
With his centre-back partner Gabriel Magalhaes having signed a new deal, Gabriel Jesus and Oleksandr Zinchenko signed up to long-term deals with their summer transfers and the potential to extend both Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli, it would be a true statement of intent from Arsenal to succeed on all fronts. Saliba would become, rightly, one of the poster boys of the club without a doubt with no longer any doubt about where his, Arteta’s and Arsenal's heads are at on his future.
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