Surviving Without Saliba

How can Arsenal cope while he is out?

Playing for France in their semi-final match against Spain, William Saliba pulled up injured in the first half and he knew it was a bad one.

This was not just a nightmare for France, it was also one of the worst case scenarios for Arsenal. Saliba has been trying to play through this back injury for a while now, he gritted his way through the run in for Arsenal and then went straight into the World Cup, all the way playing through pain.

There had already been talk that after the World Cup that Saliba might need more than the standard post tournament rest and his injury Tuesday all but confirms that. Now we are left with the some major questions; how long he will be out for? how will Arsenal look without him anchoring the defense? how do they react in on the squad planning to his absence?

Saliba’s impact on Arsenal

Since being integrated into the team, Saliba has been remarkably durable, starting 163 of a possible 191 matches across the Premier League and Champions League. With/without analysis is never perfectly clean, but the gap here for Arsenal and Saliba is hard to miss.

With Saliba playing Arsenal have been one of the best teams in the world, a +1.3 goal difference backed by a +0.97 xG difference with an average of 2.2 points won per match (84 points over a season) is damn good.

In the mercifully short stretches without him, these numbers drop significantly, points per match drops 10% to a 76 point pace, goal difference drops 43%, and expected goals difference drops 35%.

Arsenal are still a good team but missing one of the best center backs in the world is a major blow.

This isn’t hopeless; Arsenal have played well without Saliba in the team but they have also seen some of the more disappointing results come with him out. This will be a major test for Arsenal as they need to prepare for the possibility that this is an extended spell on the sidelines.

What to do?

There is reporting in L’Equipe that this injury will require surgery to fix and that is something that could mean 4-5 months out of action. Arsenal reporter Charles Watts has clarified that there is no final decision on the next steps or how much time that he could miss.

“On Saliba, Arsenal are waiting to assess him once he's returned. Any suggestion on timeframe is understood to be speculation at this stage because it's just too early to know. Clearly it's a worry, but it's just not known yet how long he will be out for or whether surgery is needed.”

With the transfer window open, and preseason just ahead there is time to assess the internal options while also exploring bringing in a new player.

Arsenal have Cristhian Mosquera, Jurriën Timber, and Ben White who could all fill in at right center back. I rate all of these players highly and would feel comfortable with them starting for Arsenal but these players are also the options at right back.

Arsenal would be looking at three players to cover two positions for potentially the first 3-4 months of the season.

This amount of depth is normally something that you can just about get away with for that amount of time, but it is complicated by the uncertainty around the health of Timber and White.

Timber was only able to play in one match after coming off injured against Everton in March. His recovery has been challenging, the initial prognosis wasn’t that serious but he continued to need additional time. He had still not recovered enough to participate in the World Cup, with the concerning update from the Dutch medical team that he not recovered sufficiently to play in a “medically responsible manner”. There haven’t been any further updates on his status and this will be something that we will watch as the team gets together for preseason.

White’s recovery should hopefully be a bit better understood but his recent injury record is concerning for how much the team should depend on him to be available for coverage. His season was cut short after he suffered an MCL injury against West Ham in May, with a target to be back by preseason.

I always keep a short list of things to watch in preseason, and how the team covers right center back and right back, plus how White and Timber look physically, just jumped toward the top of it.

Unless this turns out much worse than expected, I don’t anticipate that Arsenal panic-buying a defender. In soccer it is tough to go out and look at a short term fix, if you make a transfer the team is making a multi-year commitment and that is a mismatch to provide coverage to an injury that would be months long, even something potentially “free” like John Stones (an online speculation choice, not linked as far as I know) would weigh an Arsenal move against longer contract offers, let alone Arsenal considering his track record of availability.

That being said, going into the summer I did think that there was the possibility of an addition here, especially if the team wanted to try add a different type of profile at right back.

To date there haven’t been too many links to defenders with really only Ezri Konsa rumors floating around. That might accelerate now on this injury news and the season approaching. This is also a good time to plug the lists that Adam has put together to identify and rank potential targets in both center back and full back.

Final Rankings: CBs

The final rankings: Fullbacks

The margins at the top of the Premier League are thin enough that a 76-point pace instead of an 84-point one is the difference between defending the title and watching someone else lift it. Arsenal edged their rivals last season by surviving the attritional nature of the league better than anyone, and while everyone would surely like to avoid a repeat of that, it is looking increasingly like the reality of the modern game.

On paper, Arsenal should have the depth to survive three or four months without Saliba. What they can't afford is to find out in October that the coverage plan was built on Timber and White's best-case scenarios. The next six weeks of preseason will tell us a lot, and might end up defining Arsenal’s title defense.