Saliba on the brink of making club history

For the third season in a row, we’ll be looking to get our Premier League campaign off to a winning start against Wolves on Saturday, and should we do that, one Gunner in particular will create a slice of club history.

Those previous opening-day wins against Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest saw William Saliba included in our line-up, who made his club debut against the Eagles at Selhurst Park two years ago. And those victories were two of 49 he’s been a part of in the Premier League, meaning he’s one way from completing a half-century of three-point hauls.

And should he hit the half-ton this weekend, then our friends at Opta have confirmed that our French defender will become the fastest Arsenal player in our history to reach that tally:

In fact, William has four opportunities to break this particular record, given that the player he is trying to overhaul at the top of the list is Nacho Monreal, who took 70 matches to get to 50 league wins.

Saliba's first 65 games have yielded 49 wins, eight draws and eight defeats, giving us a win percentage of 75.4% when he's featured. We also conceded only 54 goals at that time, an average of 0.8 per game. He has kept 29 clean sheets, with the 18 he was a part of last term the most by any player in the division.

However, two of William’s current teammates can lay claim to having racked up 50 Premier League wins quicker than him. When you look at the all-time rankings, both Gabriel Jesus (62) and Oleksandr Zinchenko (63) have managed to just pip our centre-back thanks to their time at Manchester City, whose players dominate this particular statistic.