Good morning to you. Some details to help us through this Saturday’s blog.
First, we had a bit of a surprising contract extension story yesterday when the club announced that Gabriel Magalhaes had signed a new long-term contract with the club. I say a little surprising because all the recent talk has been about Bukayo Saka, William Saliba and Gabriel Martinelli, but this is also a situation we should have been aware of.
Gabriel signed from Lille in 2020, we’re heading into 2023, and although I think he signed a five-year deal at that point, there’s nothing wrong with signing a player that the manager and the club hold dear. There’s been a lot of discussion about him lately, and while there are obviously aspects of his game that he can improve on, there aren’t too many left-back center-backs of his level out there. Let us also remember that he is still only 24 years old, very young in the life of a central defender, so there is plenty of time for him to mature and develop.
There have been mistakes, but there have also been mistakes by the hugely impressive William Saliba, but they don’t have the same approach. I understand why that is, but I think the focus on Gabriel is a bit unfair. Obviously, he is a player that Mikel Arteta really values too, and you don’t start 44 consecutive league games with this manager if he has doubts about you. Even that level of constant availability is a major asset.
Speaking to the official site, Gabriel said:
“It is my dream and today is the best day of my life. I am very happy to extend my contract here. Every game the fans are pushing the team in the stadium. That is why I am so happy to stay here. Arsenal is my home.
“In the future, I want to win games for Arsenal, I want to win trophies with Arsenal and stay here for a long time because it’s my home.”
Personally, I think this is good news and good management of the squad. I’ve seen stories this week that we’re still in the market for a left-footed central midfielder, and that makes sense too. While we have players who can play that position, Arteta clearly likes a southpaw and on that basis we don’t have a ‘natural’ replacement for Gabriel. For now, however, the Brazilian is a key player in this team. We’ve been complaining for too long about the club handling contracts poorly, so any criticism of this would seem a bit rude to me.
Just touching on the fact that Gabriel basically starts every game, and in relation to Arteta’s comments after the PSV game about top players playing all the time, he was asked about the rotation in his pre-Southampton press conference. , and said:
We’re going to rotate the roster, but I can’t change 11 players in the roster every three days, it’s crazy and we don’t have enough numbers to change 11 players every game. We were with 15 or 16 outfield players in the last four or five weeks, so the players will have to play. If we want robust players, they will have to start doing it early in their careers.
I discussed this in some depth with Clive on Arsecast yesterday, but found the manager’s take on it fascinating. As fans, we are concerned with the physical demands placed on players, exhaustion, fatigue, injuries caused by ‘overplaying’ and everything in between; while Arteta’s perspective is much more about the mentality of the players. I think we have to recognize that he’s in a position where he knows a lot more about the fitness of the players he drafts week in and week out, so I think he informs the way he thinks about it.
Which is not to say that I think fans are wrong to worry. We’ve been through a lot when it comes to injuries to our favorite players over the years, and there’s an element of us wanting to bubble wrap them at all times except when it’s deemed really important. I still think we need a slightly deeper team, and I hope the club will address it in the January transfer window, but Arteta is trying to create a culture where all his players want to play all the time. No picking and choosing games away from home or any of that nonsense. I know not everyone will agree with him on this, and that’s fair, but I think his whole mindset about it is really interesting.
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A little cleaning to finish. I know that some people have reached out because they are not receiving the blog via email at the moment. We discovered that it had been added to a fairly important spam list for reasons we don’t understand. We have requested that it be removed from the list, but they are not particularly helpful. Although we hope that we solve it as soon as possible.
And finally, we’ll have a Southampton preview podcast for you on Patreon a little later this morning. For now, have fun.
