William Saliba has suggested that he doesn't yet feel like an Arsenal player.
The Frenchman arrived at the Emirates Stadium in the summer of 2019 for a reported fee of £27m, but is yet to make his first-team debut for the north London outfit.
That's for two reasons.
One being that he spent last season on loan with Saint-Etienne and the other being that Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has been reluctant to use Saliba so far this term.
As a result, the 19-year-old appears to think he's not a fully-fledged Arsenal player because he's not featured for the senior team in a competitive fixture yet.
Saliba made the rather surprising comments in the latest episode of the Gunners' 'What Do You Know?' series as he took on Alexandre Lacazette.
In the clip uploaded to the club's YouTube page, at around the 3.37-minute mark, both players are tasked with naming Arsenal's French players.
Lacazette names Saliba, but the defender corrects his compatriot by saying: "I haven't played yet!"
The pair find humour in the latter's reaction, but the youngster remains adamant that he can't be classed as one of Arsenal's French players until he makes his competitive debut.
This exchange caught the attention of Yannick Bolasie who responded by delivering his verdict on Saliba.
"Was rated more highly than Fofana at Saint-Etienne & he’s come and balled out...defo ain’t about ability," Bolasie tweeted.
With that said, Arteta has hinted that Saliba could soon make his Arsenal debut.
"Whenever we have the spaces and we believe that he's ready to play with us," Arteta told football.london, in response to when Saliba could make his senior debut. "To be fair, he's made massive improvements in the last few months and it's been a really tricky situation for him.
"As I mentioned before, [we have] designed a pathway for him and there were a lot of things that happened to him in his personal life and professionally as well.
"Now we've made some steps forwards, he's working really hard and played for the under-21s again.
"That was a good game because Martinelli finally came back for 45 minutes, so I think it was a really positive day for us in terms of that."
