Mikel Arteta has defended how Arsenal handled William Saliba's progress over the past two seasons.

The Gunners bought Saliba back in 2019 from St. Etienne, loaning him straight back to the Ligue 1 club.

Saliba, 21, excelled last season at Marseille and there was talk of him staying permanently in France, however Arteta has the Frenchman back in his squad for the upcoming season.

"I am really happy in how he's adapted," said Arteta. "Obviously it's always something that you have to see, spending a year away from here in a completely different league.

"But playing the amount of minutes that he played and the way you could see he was growing and developing, he gave us a lot of reasons that he could be the player that we need.

"And in the last few weeks, he's given us every reason to believe that we made the right decision, loaning him for a year because he now looks ready to go.

"In our opinion, it's not just my opinion, he needed that exposure. You don't see players at 18 or 19 years old playing at their highest level in top clubs. It just doesn't happen.

"We, as a club, a few years ago made a big investment because we believed he could be a player who could make a significant impact in our team and we believe again that the best way to do it is to give him a pathway that we couldn't give him here, especially because we didn't have Europe so he wouldn't play so many minutes or very few minutes.

"Now we have a very different context and hopefully that will prove that for him and for the club it was the right decision. But at the time, I understand that we get criticised."