William Saliba brutally snubbed in league's top three defenders – 'Too many mistakes'

William Gallas controversially omitted William Saliba from his selection of the Premier League’s three best centre-backs. The former Arsenal defender believes their current star has been making “too many mistakes recently” to qualify.

At just 23 years old, Saliba has become an integral part of Mikel Arteta’s squad. The £27million they paid to sign him as a teenager in 2019 is looking more and more like a bargain with each passing season.

He hasn’t had such a solid start to this campaign and will be absent for today’s clash with Liverpool at the Emirates after his red card in the 2-0 defeat away at Bournemouth. But he’s still considered to be among the league’s elite.

However, Gallas thinks there’s currently three better defenders than him. And he also notably excluded Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk, instead picking his and Saliba’s partners as well as a Manchester City star.

Naming his selections to Prime Casino, Gallas said: “I have to put Gabriel [Magalhaes] from Arsenal. I have to put him in my top three centre-backs at this moment in time because he scores some very important goals for Arsenal as well as being an excellent defender.

“I will put Ibrahima Konate in my top three, too. He’s been excellent for Liverpool this season. And the last one, I would have liked to put Saliba, but he’s been making too many mistakes recently.

“He isn’t playing his best football right now, so I can’t say that he is one of the best three centre-backs after eight games in the Premier League. I’m going to have to go with Josko Gvardiol.

“I know that he plays most of his games at left-back, but he’s a centre-back really, and I think he’s an excellent player.” Intriguingly, however, Gallas would rather watch Gvardiol’s team-mate at City, John Stones, over any other player in the league.

“I will always choose a defender when looking at players that I want to watch or would pay money to watch,” he continued. “At the moment, the man I would like to see is John Stones.

“I enjoy watching him, how he plays. His desire, to win, to score. It’s not the first time he scored a last-minute goal for his team. He’s a centre-back, but he can play in the middle. He’s not afraid to play a part in the offensive game. There’s a lot of rotation in that Man City squad, when he plays, he’s always reliable.

“He consistently delivers a good performance and, sometimes, we know that it’s not easy to play one game and then be on the bench for two or three games. Some players need to play every game to feel good. John Stones, it doesn’t matter when he’s in the starting eleven. His performance is always good. I like him.”