Despite appearing well-stocked in the area, Arsenal have decided to splash the cash on yet another formidable centre-back with the signing of Ezri Konsa. Here, we explain why.
If there was one area of the team where it didn’t really feel like Arsenal needed to make additions this summer, it was in defence.
Mikel Arteta’s side won the Premier League last season while conceding just 27 goals, some eight fewer than any other side. And at times, they looked thoroughly unbreakable when under huge pressure: a four-game streak of clean sheets through late April and May was ultimately what secured them the title.
In Ezri Konsa, a centre-back who just so happens to be able to cover at right-back, too.
That versatility will have played a part in the decision to sign him for a not-insignificant fee, apparently in excess of £50 million, but there is more concern among fans that the club are even more worried about Saliba’s injury than first feared. The growing assumption is that Arsenal aren’t very optimistic about Saliba making a quick return, and they have deemed £50m a price worth paying for a little more peace of mind about their defensive options.
But they wouldn’t have done that for just anyone. At 28, Konsa is in the prime of his career, and he has been one of the Premier League’s best centre-backs for the last few years. This summer, he started seven of eight games in England’s run to the semi-finals of the 2026 World Cup.
First and foremost, and typically for an Arsenal defender signed by Arteta, he is an excellent defender, rarely beaten in individual battles. In 231 Premier League appearances, he has been dribbled past by an opponent just 37 times, at a rate of 0.17 times per 90.
Over that period, the only outfielder with a better such rate while playing at least 100 times is Manchester City forward Erling Haaland (0.13), for whom being dribbled past is far less consequential because of the positions he takes up on the pitch. It’s no coincidence that both Saliba (0.2) and Gabriel (0.23) are also in the top 10.
However, the dribbled-past metric can be slightly misleading, because it doesn’t take fouls into account. So, by this measure, a defender can take out an attacker to avoid being “dribbled past”.
To – ahem – tackle this problem, we can use something called ‘true tackles’ to get a better idea of defensive ability in one-on-one situations. True tackle attempts are a sum of successful tackles (where possession is regained or when the ball goes out of play and is safe), challenges lost (where a player attempts a tackle and doesn’t connect with the ball), and fouls when attempting a tackle. We can use true tackle success rate – the proportion of true tackles that are successful tackles – to get an idea of how good players are when defending against dribbling. As it turns out, Konsa still excels on this front.
Of all players to play at least 100 Premier League games since Konsa joined Villa in July 2019, only Brentford defender Ethan Pinnock (75.7%) boasts a better true tackle success rate than Konsa (74.8%). In other words, over the course of his entire Premier League career, Konsa has been one of the most consistent players when it comes to defending in individual duels, successfully taking the ball with three in every four of his tackle attempts. Saliba, notably, ranks fourth in this list (73.8%). This is clearly something that Arteta values highly.
Something else that is key to any player the Spaniard considers signing is physical resilience and consistency of availability. Konsa ticks that box.
Over the seven seasons since he moved to Villa, only seven players have made more Premier League appearances than him (231). He has been available for selection and in Villa’s matchday squad at least 90% of the time in six of those seven seasons, with a low of 83% in 2021-22. It wasn’t even injuries that kept him out of action that season either: he was sent off twice and so missed a handful of games through suspension. He has only been dismissed twice in the four seasons since.
Konsa is also very capable on the ball, though his Premier League-leading pass completion rate of 95.5% in 2025-26 (100+ minutes played) may appear impressive on first glance; on closer inspection, there is more to it. So, too, his league-high 93.8% completion rate with passes while under pressure from an opponent.
0.8 xP).
That is, Konsa almost exclusively played passes that are completed at least eight of 10 times. Indeed, while ranking seventh for total successful passes in the Premier League in 2025-26, Konsa was down in 52nd for line-breaking passes (192), further showing that he rarely makes passes that would particularly benefit his team.
In his defence, though, it isn’t his job to make difficult passes, break lines and progress play, and similar can be said of Saliba at Arsenal. The Frenchman ranked sixth in the Premier League last season for proportion of passes which were categorised as “easy”, with 88.1%. Also, he ranked only slightly ahead of Konsa for line-breaking passes (201).
Konsa’s role on the ball at Arsenal as Saliba’s replacement will be similar to that which he played at Villa: to make sure he retains possession while finding a player more suited to getting the ball up the pitch. All while winning his individual battles.
Every player signed by Arsenal will have their set-piece threat scrutinised, and Konsa showed with his expertly taken header against France in the third-place play-off this summer that he can be a useful weapon at corners.
However, this isn’t an area in which he particularly shines. He didn’t score a single goal in 34 Premier League appearances last season, and only had 11 shots.
Meanwhile, at the other end of the pitch, he only won the first contact at a defensive corner three times all season. Emiliano Martínez (23) and Amadou Onana (13) did far more work in clearing corners for Villa.
But that’s not to say this isn’t something he could do at Arsenal. And there are enough other aspects of his game to make him an adept Saliba stand-in and a very appropriate signing for Arsenal.
From Konsa’s perspective, the move guarantees him the chance to fight for more silverware after winning the Europa League with Villa last season. Arsenal will hope to compete on all four fronts this term.
However, he will surely be aware that he could struggle to hold down a place in the team once Saliba returns (before even considering whether he is ahead of Cristhian Mosquera in the pecking order), and that may mean having to accept some time in an unpreferred role at right-back.
That might be the small price he has to pay to play for one of Europe’s elite teams, though, and if he accepts that role, he could make this move a big success.
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Ezri Konsa to Arsenal: Another Versatile Duel Monster Who Is Always Available Opta Analyst.
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