Emmanuel Petit hits out at Arsenal star who doesn’t ‘deserve’ to start at World Cup for England | OneFootball

Emmanuel Petit has torn into an Arsenal Premier League champion who “doesn’t make an impact” and therefore doesn’t “deserve” to start for England at the World Cup.

Four Arsenal stars have headed to the World Cup with England following their Premier League triumph with the Gunners. Bukayo Saka, Declan Rice, Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke will all be at the world’s biggest tournament.

It would be the stuff of dreams if the quartet managed to head home as World Cup champions just a couple of months after lifting the Premier League title.

Saka and Rice are expected by most to start the tournament for the Three Lions, if fit. However, for Arsenal legend Petit, the former, who has 49 caps for his country and has already played at three major tournaments at the age of 24, is not justifying his status in the starting XI at the moment.

He said on talkSPORT: “Saka, for me, is not coming out of a good season with Arsenal. We saw that in the Champions League final. He doesn’t make an impact anymore, and I think that there are other players who deserve to be picked in the starting lineup.

“I’m a huge, huge fan of Saka, but I’ve got to be honest. If I’m his team-mate, I don’t understand it. There are so many strong and talented players who are better than Saka.”

In the aforementioned Champions League final, Saka played 83 minutes and, per FotMob, was the lowest-rated starter in the game, with his 6.1 rating 0.4 worse than Cristhian Mosquera and Myles Lewis-Skelly.

Saka’s recent form

In his last four games in all competitions, Saka has scored one goal and not assisted. That includes a 28-minute outing for England against Costa Rica in preparation for the World Cup.

However, in the space of four games in May, the Arsenal winger scored twice and assisted twice, including the crucial goal in the second leg of the Champions League semi-final against Atletico Madrid.

While he hasn’t been in electric form in the few games since then, that was not very long ago at all, and Saka knows how to perform in a major tournament.

In the last World Cup, he scored three goals and assisted once, and in the Euros, the winger scored a goal in the quarter-finals after assisting in the group stages.

He will have little doubt in his mind that he can have a big impact for England when it comes to it.