While the glory is yet to arrive, Mikel Arteta has utterly transformed Arsenal over the last five years or so.
He took charge of a team that were stuck in mid-table and, within a few years, turned them into genuine challengers for the Premier League and Champions League.
This incredible evolution is certainly due in part to his philosophy and tactics, but it has also been aided by the exceptional players he has signed along the way.
That said, there is a superstar in the team today, signed by Unai Emery, whose valuation has exploded over the years, someone who has been pivotal to the evolution of the backline.
The evolution of Arsenal's backline
The first game of Arteta’s tenure was away to Bournemouth in December 2019, and to say the backline for that match was underwhelming would be an understatement.
GK – Bernd Leno
RB – Ainsley Maitland-Niles
CB – Sokratis
CB – David Luiz
LB – Bukayo Saka
CM – Lucas Torreira
CM – Granit Xhaka
RW – Reiss Nelson
CAM – Mesut Ozil
LW – Aubameyang
CF – Alexandre Lacazette
In fact, the only player still at the club is Bukayo Saka, and the idea of the Gunners’ now playing their best attacker at left-back is patently absurd.
Fortunately, Gabriel Magalhães was signed from LOSC Lille the following summer to replace Sokratis Papastathopoulos.
The manager still opted for a three or five-at-the-back system for the start of the 20/21 season, which was soon replaced with the four-at-the-back system that fans were clamouring for at the time.
That season saw Gabriel start most games, and then, depending on who was fit, it would be David Luiz or Robert Holding next to him, with Hector Bellerin or Maitland-Niles on the right and, again, when fit, Kieran Tierney on the left.
That summer saw another key figure join the club in Ben White, who, for the 21/22 campaign, became the other regular starting centre-back alongside the Gunners’ current number six.
The Englishman would move to the right-back position just a year later, the same summer Oleksandr Zinchenko joined the club.
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However, his defensive fragilities would see him start to lose his place within 18 months and then altogether with the emergence of Myles Lewis-Skelly and the arrival of Riccardo Calafiori two years later.
Finally, the defence everyone recognises today was completed upon the return to fitness of Jurrien Timber, David Raya making the goalkeeping role his own, and a certain signing made by Emery, who is now worth a king’s ransom.
The Emery signing now with a fortune
Arsenal’s defence is now a beast but there’s one man, despite Gabriel’s best efforts, who always maintains the same standards.
That man is William Saliba, who joined Arsenal for around £27m in the summer of 2019 when, remarkably, Emery was still in charge.
He didn’t actually play a competitive game for the club until the start of the 22/23 season, when his arrival saw White move to the right.
Impressively, the Frenchman is now valued at a staggering €103m by the CIES Football Observatory, which works out to around £89m, or 229% more than he cost the Gunners over five years ago. To put that into context, CIES believe that he is the most valuable player in the whole squad, even ahead of Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka.
That is an incredible increase, but it’s one that his performances and potential more than justify.
For example, in just his first game for the club, away to Crystal Palace, he helped the team to keep a clean sheet and was named the Man of the Match.
He then went on to play a crucial role in the North Londoners’ surprise title challenge, which unsurprisingly started to come apart following his back injury against Sporting CP towards the end of the season.
Since then, he has undoubtedly become an even better defender, someone who is as capable of putting in a last-minute goal-denying challenge or pinging the ball from the defence up to Saka to create a chance.
Premier League
106
FA Cup
3
League Cup
6
Champions League
22
Europa League
4
Community Shield
1
For example, FBref ranked him in the top 1% of centre-backs in the Premier League last season for pass completion, the top 4% for live-ball passes, the top 6% for total shots, the top 8% for passes blocked and more, all per 90.
Moreover, he has also helped the Gunners produce the best defence in the league for the last two seasons, and considering they’ve conceded just three goals in seven games this year, it may well be three in a row come May.
It cannot be overstated just how vital the Bondy-born “monster,” as dubbed by content creator Connor Humm, is to Arteta’s project, and so the news that he signed a five-year contract extension last week was as exciting as a new signing.
Ultimately, Arsenal have created arguably the best defence in Europe over the last three years, and Saliba has been a massive part of that.,
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