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Jamie Carragher has warned Arsenal that the club risk losing William Saliba to Real Madrid ‘if they don’t start winning trophies very quickly’ under Mikel Arteta.
Saliba has established himself as one of the most highly regarded central defenders in Premier League football over the last few seasons and has twice been named in the PFA Team of the Year.
The 23-year-old is still yet to win a major trophy in north London, though, with the club’s two Community Shield wins in 2020 and 2023 representing his only pieces of silverware to date.
Over the last two seasons Arsenal have – on both occasions – finished runners-up to Manchester City in the top flight and Arteta’s men require an almighty collapse from Liverpool if they are to have any hope of sealing the title this term.
However, the Gunners remain in the firmly in the mix for Champions League glory, progressing from the league phase with a third-place finish to book themselves a last-16 tie against PSV Eindhoven.
But it’s approaching five years since Arsenal last won a trophy – when Arteta steered the club to a 14th FA Cup triumph – and Carragher believes the long wait for success should be a big concern at the Emirates.
‘There is one player… and people will be thinking I’m trying to cause a problem for Arsenal here and I’m not,’ the former Liverpool and England defender said on the latest episode of It’s Called Soccer.
‘But I think when you’re at a club and this happened to us at Liverpool, once you don’t win the league or the Champions League, other bigger clubs start thinking, “Okay, we can take their player”.
‘So for us at Liverpool it was [Xabi] Alonso, [Javier] Mascherano and [Fernando] Torres and then that team that had been built by Rafa Benitez – players were just leaving left, right and centre.
‘I do look at Saliba and to me he looks like a Real Madrid player. I can imagine him in a Real Madrid kit.
‘You look at some of the best centre-backs out there, the longer your club isn’t winning or competing for trophies and when you’re as good as him and some of the players we had in our team…
‘Mascherano went to the great Barcelona team, Alonso goes to Real Madrid, it didn’t happen for Torres, he made the wrong choice at Chelsea.
‘But the longer you go without winning, people start looking at your players and thinking, “Okay, we’re going to take them!”, and the players are receptive to it.’
Real Madrid’s interest in Saliba has been well documented in recent months, with the France centre-back reportedly identified as the club’s top transfer target for the summer.
And according to Carragher, the longer Arsenal’s wait for a trophy goes on, the more likely it is that a player of Saliba’s quality will get itchy feet.
‘It’s a short career, they want to be playing in the Champions League final, they want to be winning it,’ Carragher added.
‘Listen, that might happen to Arsenal this season but that’s a problem that they will have going forward if they don’t start winning trophies very quickly.’
Ian Wright made similar remarks over Saliba’s future earlier this week, with rumours swirling linking the Frenchman with a big-money summer switch to the Bernabeu.
Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Magalhaes and Saliba are all out of contract at Arsenal in 2027 and Wright fears the club could be faced with a similar situation that Liverpool have with Trent Alexander-Arnold, Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk.
‘When you’re talking about renewals with certain players… Saka, Gabriel, Saliba… the way they’re moving now, I bet those renewals are all going to be slow,’ the ex-Arsenal striker said on the Wrighty’s House podcast.
‘We’re going to have a situation maybe like Liverpool with Trent, Salah and Virgil.
‘If I’m one of these players… and their teams are going to be saying, “Let’s wait and see, we’ve got two years left so let’s wait and see who they get in the summer! I know the manager has signed again but let’s wait and see!”.
‘If they’re not going to get the kind of players that take us to the next step… look at Saliba. Real Madrid would take him tomorrow. Why not wait and see what’s going on in the summer to see the kind of players and calibre of player we’re signing?’
Wright stressed that it was ‘vitally important’ for Arsenal to ‘get it right’ in terms of recruitment if they have serious ambitions of keeping hold of key players like Saliba.
He added: ‘This is what the people upstairs need to be careful of and I’m sure Mikel will have told them that because he’s probably got the same kind of ambition: if you’re not going to give me the kind of players I need, I’m not going to be able to keep the players I’ve got here that are our best players, who are now running down their contracts.
‘We haven’t even got into that conversation yet about these players. This summer and who comes is f***ing vitally important to these players.
‘There’s a lot going on right now that needs to be unpacked by these people upstairs and they better get it right. They better get it right.’
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