‘Always’—William Saliba Makes Arsenal Premier League Title Admission

Arsenal centre back William Saliba admitted that his side have “always” been missing “something” during their failed title challenges in recent years, but was hopeful that the club’s extensive summer outlay would plug that intangible gap.

Saliba has been a key figure in Mikel Arteta’s side during each of their successive runner-up finishes over the past three seasons. It was an injury to the talismanic Frenchman which undermined the first of those doomed surges, while Manchester City just pipped Arsenal to the title in 2024.

Liverpool proved too much for the Gunners last term as an increasingly blunt attack failed to build upon the firm foundations laid by the club’s imperious rearguard.

“Of course we’ve finished second for three years in a row, and we know that we always miss something,” Saliba sighed at Tuesday’s PFA awards. “Now it’s a new season, we have to see what we didn’t do well enough to win the league.

“We won the first game and of course we want to win the league, and we will give everything. We have to try to be even better than the last three seasons to win this league.”

William Saliba — Arsenal kicked off their Premier League season with three points. | Pual Ellis/AFP via Getty Images

Saliba highlighted the club’s fresh recruits as a potential source of this improvement. “We know that the new players who came to help us, and I’m sure that they will help us to win some trophies,” the centre back noted. “Of course we are already better with them.”

Arsenal’s once formidable defender has endured a personal dip in form over recent months. Saliba was again shaky during an opening weekend victory over Manchester United on Sunday which saw the entire team struggle. Once more, the Gunners had to rely upon a set-piece goal to secure three scratchy points.

“We want to score in any context—set pieces, counterattack, everything,” Saliba shrugged. “We have to give everything and we know that we can win every time. Of course we knew that we didn’t play our best football, but at the end we knew that it was the first game at Old Trafford with some new signings from them.

“We knew that they will be good, and they were good. They caused us a lot of problems but, at the end, we are happy to win this game and to keep a clean sheet.

“We just miss trophies,” was Saliba’s somewhat resigned conclusion. “We play good, we are good, but we miss trophies, and we have to win trophies with Arsenal to be even better.”