William Saliba was central to Arsenal‘s strategy of “take a step back to go forward” as they clinched their first league title in 22 years. Arsenal co-chair Josh Kroenke revealed how the club resolved to chart a new course almost immediately following the Europa League final in 2019, when they fell to Chelsea and Unai Emery was dismissed six months afterwards.
It represented a genuine nadir for the club, yet Kroenke recalled a pivotal exchange with former Arsenal defender and academy director Mertesacker that set the club on an entirely different trajectory.
Kroenke said: “It’s funny to think back on this one, I had a great conversation with Per Mertesacker. After the final in Baku I made a comment about Virgil van Dijk, who had arrived at Liverpool a year or two before.
“I said: ‘How do we get one of these guys into our system?’ He said: ‘Well, unless you’ve got 100 million quid, you better not be thinking about him.’ I said, ‘Who’s the best young defender in Europe?’
“He turned without hesitation and said William Saliba. That summer there were already conversations around building to the future. There were so many moving parts at that time…”
Arsenal secured Saliba’s signature that summer but subsequently sent him out on loan for three years before Mikel Arteta made him a cornerstone of their defence, with the Frenchman establishing himself as one of the finest defenders on the planet.
Kroenke said: “I don’t get involved in transfers. I think my job is to understand the ‘why’ on the front end, so there’s accountability on the back end if it goes wrong.
“So, I’m not taking credit for any transfers or anything like that, but I want to be around and understand why we’re going after certain things.
“The William one is interesting and Mikel and I have now laughed about this because I didn’t tell him the story until much later, but when we purchased William and he went on loan for two seasons.
“Then we were transitioning to Mikel by the time William rejoined us, there some thoughts on the front end about William rejoining our squad that were very well covered. I’ll let you guys fill in all those blanks.
“But I was sitting over in America laughing, going, ‘Please let this kid work out!’ I was never going to say, ‘Hey, someone told me a few years ago that this kid was going to be great!’ What am I going to do? No. They go do it themselves. They make the decisions.”