Arsenal sealed the transfer of 18-year-old defender William Saliba from Saint-Etienne on Thursday evening as they made their third signing of the summer.
Teenager Saliba joined just hours after the club announced a deal to sign Dani Ceballos on loan from Real Madrid, who along with Brazilian youngster Gabriel Martinelli, make up Arsenal’s incomings so far ahead of the new season.
According to Sky Sports, Arsenal are paying around £27m for the centre-back, who re-joins the Ligue 1 outfit on loan for the upcoming season as part of the deal, and will link up with his new Gunners teammates before the start of the 2020/21 campaign.
It is thought that Saliba had a number of destinations to choose from, with Arsenal’s North London rivals among his suitors – as Spurs were reportedly in talks to hijack the Gunners’ bid for the Frenchman, before the defender opted to become an Arsenal player.
Saliba made 19 appearances for Saint-Etienne last season, helping the side towards a fourth-place finish in the French top flight, and was capped by France’s Under-20 side back in March for the first time.
The youngster becomes Arsenal’s first defensive signing of the summer, although he will not be filling into the Gunners backline until next year.
Saliba’s arrival at Arsenal (in the immediate sense, at least) is potentially a further sign of Unai Emery’s attention towards youth when it comes to recruitment. Ceballos is the oldest of the Gunners’ new arrivals at 22 years of age, while the Spaniard has integrated the likes of Joe Willock (19) and Eddie Nketiah (20) into the first team during pre-season.
Whether this turns out to be a true feature of Emery’s rebuilding of this Arsenal team remains to be seen, but in Saliba alone, Arsenal are clearly preparing for the future by taking the hit of doing without the starlet’s services for a year – even if it means having to make do with largely the same defence that leaked many a goal last season.
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