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It has been well over a year since Arsenal last had to play a Premier League game without William Saliba. The numbers suggest they could really miss the French centre-back against Liverpool on Sunday.
This Sunday, Arsenal host Liverpool in one of the biggest games of the 2024-25 Premier League season so far.
The match pits the team who many see as Manchester City’s likeliest challengers for the title against the team currently sitting top of the table, and it promises to be a pivotal day for both clubs.
It is quite an onion in the ointment for Arsenal, then, that they will be without arguably their most important player for a league game for the first time since May 2023.
William Saliba was given his marching orders in the 2-0 defeat at Bournemouth last weekend, shown a red card after a VAR review following his last-man foul on Evanilson. The 23-year-old will therefore be suspended for Liverpool’s visit.
This has been a recurring issue of late, with Saliba receiving Arsenal’s third red card in just eight league games this season after Declan Rice was sent off against Brighton in August and Leandro Trossard was dismissed against Man City last month.
In fact, the 18 reds that the north London side have been shown since Mikel Arteta arrived in December 2019 is at least five more than any other team in that time.
The impending one-game suspension of Saliba feels just a bit different, though.
The French centre-back has been a rock for Arteta’s Gunners for the last two and a bit seasons; a central part of their supreme defensive efforts last season that almost saw Arsenal pip Man City to the Premier League title.
Saliba has been reliable in every sense, only suffering one injury in that time. However, it coincided with the collapse of their title challenge the season before last, and is perhaps the reason why Arsenal fans might be panicking a bit ahead of the visit of Arne Slot’s in-form Liverpool.
Overall, since Saliba made his debut, Arsenal have won 74% of their Premier League games and conceded on average 0.8 goals per game with him in the starting team. That is in stark contrast to their 45% win rate and 1.6 goals conceded per game when Saliba has been absent.
There is important context to put with those stats, though.
In March 2023, following a 3-0 win at Fulham, Arsenal sat top of the Premier League, five points clear of Man City and seemingly on course to win their first title since 2004. Saliba had played all 27 of their league matches to that point but missed their last 11.
Initially, Arsenal coped well enough, overcoming Crystal Palace and Leeds United in back-to-back 4-1 wins at the Emirates, but a 2-2 draw against – funnily enough – Liverpool was the beginning of the end for the Gunners. They won just three of their last nine matches, conceding 16 goals and losing three of their last six games.
That saw them finish five points behind City, who swept them aside 4-1 at the Etihad Stadium during that final run of matches.
The absence of Saliba was seen by many as the primary cause for Arsenal’s dip in form, and not without reason as Arteta’s men had otherwise been consistently solid throughout the season to that point.
For the first 27 games with Saliba in the team, Arsenal averaged 0.98 expected goals (xG) against and 8.3 shots faced per game. In the 11 games without him, that went up to 1.43 xG against and 10.7 shots faced per game.
It should be noted, though, that Arsenal did only fail to win two of their six home games in that period, mostly struggling on the road. As well as Palace and Leeds, they defeated Chelsea 3-1 and Wolves 5-0 without Saliba in the team. Their only dropped points at the Emirates came from a 3-3 draw with Southampton and a 3-0 loss at the hands of Brighton. That they are at home on Sunday should at least be a boost, even in Saliba’s absence.
What’s more, they have better players in reserve nowadays. In the draw with Southampton, Rob Holding partnered Gabriel Magalhães in central defence with Oleksandr Zinchenko and Ben White at full-back. Their humbling by Brighton included Jakub Kiwior at centre-back and Kieran Tierney at left-back.
Arsenal’s squad is stronger now than it was then, with David Raya replacing Aaron Ramsdale in goal and Jurriën Timber and Riccardo Calafiori added as backline options in the last few transfer windows.
However, heading into Sunday’s clash with Liverpool, it seems Timber, Calafiori and Takehiro Tomiyasu could all be unavailable through injury. Holding has long since departed so it may well be Kiwior who comes in at centre-back. The Pole was brought on following Saliba’s dismissal at Bournemouth, only to be subbed off again late on as Arsenal tried to get back into the game.
Ben White came off at half-time in the Gunners’ 1-0 Champions League win over Shakhtar Donetsk on Tuesday, but Arteta confirmed after the game that it was because he was on a booking rather than being an injury-related decision.
Arsenal’s defensive solidity went up a level last season, with Saliba an ever-present. In fact, prior to his sending off last Saturday, he had played every single minute in the Premier League for his team since the start of last season.
It was a team effort, of course, but you’d have to go a long way to find an Arsenal fan who doesn’t credit Saliba with being the main man at the back for them in that time. They averaged an impressive 0.75 xG against per game in the Premier League in 2023-24, and just 8.5 shots faced per game.
Their overall xG against of 28.4 was at least 7.5 lower than any other team (Man City – 35.9 xG against), while only City (294) faced fewer than their 323 shots.
Saliba backed up his growing reputation as one of the world’s best defenders with his own impressive numbers, too. No centre-back in the Premier League won possession as often last season as his 213 times, while he kept at least three more clean sheets than any other defender (18). That followed his impressive debut season in England in 2022-23, when of players to play at least 20 games, no centre-back averaged more than his 7.7 possession wins per 90 minutes.
Consistency is a crucial thing for any team, but especially in defence. It will definitely have helped Arteta that he only had three different centre-back pairings in the Premier League last season, and all three featured Saliba. By comparison, Manchester United named 15 different centre-back partnerships, and we all know about the defensive problems Erik ten Hag’s side have had.
Saliba played 34 games alongside Gabriel, three with White and one with Kiwior. Only Everton duo James Tarkowski and Jarrad Branthwaite played together as often as Saliba and Gabriel in 2023-24 (34 games), with no other partnership doing so more than 25 times.
Arsenal are certainly not a one-man team, and Arteta will have had a whole week to come up with a way of managing without Saliba, but it is a headache the Spanish coach could have done without ahead of such a big game.
It has been a while since Arsenal had to cope without their key defender. On one hand, it will be a good exercise in learning to manage with any future absences, and a massive statement of intent if they can secure a win against Liverpool sans Saliba. On the other, Arteta will probably have his fingers crossed that this is the only game his star man misses this season.
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