Country: Sweden
I’d leave to see an honest poll about how many have seen 20+ games of his. There’s a very weird fixation on him.
I have definitely seen less than 20 full games, somewhere 8-10 over the last two seasons and then watched highlight vids of individual matches from time to time.Hes clearly one of the top centre backs in the French league. Would Holding, Chambers, Mari be the same there? Maybe yes, maybe no. But we have invested the guts of 30m for nothing by the looks of things.
It's ofc hard to say about Holding, Chambers and Mari, but given the quality of some of the best center backs in that league I reckon they would fall short. Fofana is better than all three imo (albeit still more mistake prone) and he wasn't one of the top CB's of Ligue 1. Safe to say he's developed a lot at Leiceister though
Based on what I've seen, coupled with stats there's just nothing that says you don't give him a real chance to cement a starting place. Then on top of that there's the fact that he's a fairly big investment as well as the message we're sending to young, promising players. We're flogging off Guendouzi (probably the right choice and reasonable though), ESR didn't get a look in until there was pretty much no one left to play and most of us (all?) was crying out for more minutes for Martinelli.
If he isn't in the squad and doesn't get chances early on, then there's 100% some falling out or something like that on Arteta's part.