Josh Kroenke: 'I asked how do we get our own Virgil van Dijk - I was told sign William Saliba'

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William Saliba was at the centre of Arsenal’s mission to “take a step back to go forward” and win their first title in 22 years.

Arsenal co-chair Josh Kroenke revealed how the club decided to go in a different direction almost immediately after the 2019 Europa League final when they lost to Chelsea and Unai Emery was sacked six months later.

That was a real low point for the club but Kroenke recalled a conversation with former Arsenal defender and academy director Mertesacker which put the club on a different path.

Kroenke said: “It’s funny to think back on this one, I had a great conversation with Per Mertesacker. After the final in Baku I made a comment about Virgil van Dijk, who had arrived at Liverpool a year or two before.

“I said: ‘How do we get one of these guys into our system?’ He said: ‘Well, unless you’ve got 100 million quid, you better not be thinking about him.’ I said who’s the best young defender in Europe? He turned without hesitation and said William Saliba.

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“That summer there were already conversations around building to the future. There were so many moving parts at that time…”

Arsenal signed Saliba that summer but actually loaned him out for three years until Mikel Arteta finally made him a cornerstone of the defence and the French centre half has become one of the best in the world .

Kroenke said: “I don’t get involved in transfers. I think my job is to understand the ‘why’ on the front end, so there’s accountability on the back end if it goes wrong.

“So, I’m not taking credit for any transfers or anything like that, but I want to be around and understand why we’re going after certain things.

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“The William one is interesting and Mikel and I have now laughed about this because I didn’t tell him the story until much later, but when we purchased William and he went on loan for two seasons.

“Then we were transitioning to Mikel by the time William rejoined us, there were some thoughts on the front end about William rejoining our squad that were very well covered. I’ll let you guys fill in all those blanks.

“But I was sitting over in America laughing, going, ‘Please let this kid work out!’ I was never going to say, ‘Hey, someone told me a few years ago that this kid was going to be great!’

"What am I going to do? No. They go do it themselves. They make the decisions.”