Mikel Arteta reveals William Saliba has offered to play as striker to ease Arsenal injury crisis | OneFootball

Defender played up front in youth football before becoming a centre-back

Mikel Arteta has joked that William Saliba has offered to play upfront to solve Arsenal’s striker crisis.

The German will undergo surgery this week and joins Gabriel Jesus on the sidelines, with the Brazilian also out for the rest of the season after injuring his knee last month.

Leandro Trossard, who is one of only three fit forwards available for Arsenal, is expected to lead the line - but Arteta has revealed Saliba jokingly offered to step up.

“Willy is so funny,” he said. “Straight away it was one of his reactions [to offer to play upfront].

“It’s true as well that he played there. He used to score a lot of goals. But probably a lot of players played there when they were younger.

“You didn’t know that, eh [that Saliba was a striker]? Yeah, yeah. ‘I’ll play as striker,’ Willy always says. ‘I’ll play.’”

Saliba has developed into one of the best centre-backs in Europe at Arsenal, but he revealed in an interview with the club a few seasons ago that he was a striker in his youth.

The Frenchman played upfront for AS Bondy, which is also where Kylian Mbappe came through the ranks, and he was there from the age of six to 13.

“I played as a striker back then when I was young and I loved it,” said Saliba. “I would say I was one of the best players in the team, maybe the best player, I don’t know. Let’s just say I was in the top two or three!

“There were some very good players in that team too. Some of them have gone on to play professionally, not just in France but everywhere.

“We had a lot of players come through that club who went on to be professional, not just [Kylian] Mbappe of course, but players in our age group too.

“I’m still friends with some of them today. We all grew up in that city, so when we can have some days off, we go back there and it’s a good chance to meet up with people again.

“We won a lot of trophies as well so that obviously made the atmosphere really nice too. I scored a lot of goals in that team – a lot! Most of the time I played, I scored. If I ever went a game without scoring, then I would always score in the next one.

“I think I was a good player, but I was never the captain or anything like that. It was because I was too young in my head, do you know what I mean? I wasn’t very interested in being captain anyway. I was happy to be the main striker!”