William Saliba has underlined his support for the tactical approach that characterised Arsenal\u2019s title-winning campaign, insisting the club will continue to prioritise set-piece routines. In an interview with L\u2019\u00c9quipe he defended the strategy that drew criticism from some observers while delivering results.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis season … I don\u2019t agree with everything they say, like there was only one team that was playing,\u201d he told L\u2019\u00c9quipe. \u201cWe were playing football.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcept it\u2019s true that sometimes we score a lot more from set pieces. That was crazy. Now you see, in the Premier League, everyone does long throw-ins, everyone focuses on corners … it\u2019s not just us. We just do it better than the others.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, that\u2019s life, and we\u2019re going to continue like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saliba framed the emphasis on corners, free kicks and long throws as a pragmatic part of Arsenal\u2019s game rather than an admission of limited ambition. The Gunners exploited those opportunities with efficiency and, he argued, others have now adopted similar methods across the league.<\/p>\n
The season ended with a narrow defeat in the Champions League final, Arsenal losing on penalties to Paris Saint-Germain, but domestically the campaign brought long-awaited success as the club secured the Premier League title. Saliba reflected on the reaction from critics and rival fans during the run-in, recalling doubts about Arsenal\u2019s ability to close out a title race.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a lot of jokes, people made fun of us,\u201d Saliba reflected. \u201cEven when we were top of the league, they were saying that at some point we were going to bottle it and drop back to second place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s football banter, it\u2019s like that. If you want to change that, you just have to win. Now that we\u2019ve won it, they can’t say anything anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first season I arrived, we were playing incredible football. That was the season where I said we deserved the title.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saliba\u2019s comments make clear Arsenal will retain the set-piece emphasis that helped deliver silverware, even as they recover from the disappointment in Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saliba says Arsenal will persist with set pieces after winning Premier League and losing to PSG too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14232,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1647,172],"tags":[1162,1637],"class_list":["post-14233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-champions-league","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-assists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}