Marseille have confirmed that Nuno Tavares will spend the 2022/23 season on loan at the Stade Velodrome.
The Portugal under-21 international moves to France having played 28 times for Arsenal during a debut season that was promising in parts but too often pockmarked with scatty moments.
He seemed to lose the confidence of manager Mikel Arteta in the second half of the season although the Spaniard had little choice but to play the £7 million signing when Kieran Tierney suffered an injury in the closing months.
Fast and physical, he has the raw ingredients to make it at the highest level but we’ve clearly decided that educating him in the heat of battle is too much of a risk.
📽 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗼𝘀
🎬 𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗩𝗜𝗜
✍️ « 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗾𝘂𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗺𝗺𝗲́𝗱𝗶𝗮𝘁 » #BienvenueSurMars 𝗡𝘂𝗻𝗼 𝗧𝗮𝘃𝗮𝗿𝗲𝘀 👽🛸 pic.twitter.com/V2fanTvlfg— Olympique de Marseille (@OM_Officiel) July 30, 2022
Given the pursuit of Lisandro Martinez and the recent acquisition of Oleksandr Zinchenko, the writing has been on the wall for quite some time.
Interestingly, there was no shortage of suitors for Tavares’ special brand of chaos. Atalanta made enquiries, as did Brighton and several clubs in Spain.
The deal with Marseille is a straight loan so they won’t have an option to buy him next summer but given he’s under contract until 2025, we’re in no rush on that front.
Best of luck in France, Nuno.
Great for all concerns. Hope he does well and comes back ready for the prem.
*concerned!
Man, he’s gonna play UCL games. Ronaldo still haven’t found a UCL club to play for LoL
Hopefully whatever saliba and guendozi got in coaching and experience will rub off him…if not we hope he does enough to get sold at a decent fee…
Good luck to him, I hope he does well.
1 down, 7 to go.
Personally I am a bit disappointed about this, not least because I think he is decent, worth persevering with and would benefit more from being with a group of players all being coached the same way for English Premier League standard action, also we don’t know about KT, obviously Mikel does and he’s made the call but from my distance it looks unnecessarily risky to let him go now with the thought that we might have to play Cedric or Xhaka at LB again if anything happens to Zinchenko, but I’m sure the Boss knows what he is doing, maybe… Read more »
He might turn out to be decent, he is still young……..but he’s not yet. Based on his performances last season, for Arsenal to rely on him in any way this season would be madness.
Good luck to him. Hopefully he can improve over there.
You’re totally right but only in a universe where there’s no Saliba.
I’m hoping AMN stays and provides cover and competition for wing back and central mid positions.
Hopefully, he’ll stay there for good.
He was a terrible signing: never good enough for the club,
Fats when you say never are you applying it solely to the past or are you confident in also extending it to the future?
I actually agree with you on this one fats, you never know what Tavares is going to do in possession and not in a good way, more in a stroke-inducing kind of way. Like an Andre Santos with less conviction.
Yep.
I never meant to attack the lad personally, but he clearly isn’t at the level we all know this club need to be at to get top four and start making title-challenging noises.
If he was 17 or 18, even 19, I could understand i, but at 22 you need to have the basics as a given at Premiership level.
The Premiership is still the toughest league in the world, bar none, so a loan spell elsewhere is the best solution for all parties.
* understand it
You might be right but it’s so easy to forget that when Tierney came back from injury last season, there was a discussion to be had about whether he got his place back. That’s how impressive Nuno had been in Kieran’s absence. In the second half of the season he really faded (as did a lot of young players) but he lost a lot of momentum too from being perpetually benched. I think he’s probably not disciplined enough to be an Arteta player but you never know. If he can calm down and add a little maturity to his game… Read more »
It was a good run of form early on but I think there’s a reason the negatives come to mind before the positives. Getting subbed off after 30mins against Nottingham forest? And not because he was injured, because he was getting outplayed. Also the only time I remember seeing him against a top 6 team he had a complete shocker against Liverpool, solely destroying any chance we had of salvaging something.
Or even left winger if he can’t quite nail the defence side of the game but continues to rinse players and adds end product to his game.
Saka started as a wing back and I’m not saying he’s anywhere near that level but just an example of what can happen.
There was a discussion. It wasn’t needed though. Anyone watching properly knew leaving out KT was madness.
That’s the thing. Somehow most here have conviniently chosen to forget the Nuno Tavares of the first half of the season. He got exposed during the Liverpool game and afterwards he completely lost his confidence. It is only at arsenal where he played lots of games. He is experienced and young. Mistakes he made were due to the said lack of experience. It’s not a coincidence that arsenal didn’t want to include a sell on clause when loaning him out and why lots teams wanted to take him in. He is worth that risk because there is one hell of… Read more »
Had 6 starts & 1 sub appearance during that run early in the season. Against Liverpool, Man Utd & Everton (half an hour as a sub) he was nothing short of disastrous. I think you might be the one forgetting to be honest.
Nope. Prior to the Liverpool game he was doing fine.
You say ‘Nope’ but yet didn’t actually contradict me at all….would love to hear what it is you are saying ‘Nope’ to….
To be fair, he was a cheap punt with some strong attributes and he looked pretty good initially. He’s still developing and could yet be a decent player. I’m reserving judgement on him.
Think you’re wrong there. There’s a quality player in him just the experience is not yet.
“Educating him in the heat of battle is too much of a risk” Nailed it, Mr Allen. I sincerely hope he starts ironing out the creases, because he has got an awful lot to learn about defensive duties, holding a line and not making rash decisions that could jeopardise the team and become detrimental to their performance and, subsequently, their results. Yes, I have got on his back a bit, but with good cause; his rash decisions could have put the team in more danger than we already were in having to cope without Partey, Tierney, Tommi and have centre… Read more »
Physical monster, has. a long way to go technically and tactically. He’s still young though. Good luck to him
I’d love to see him back in the future with the defensive nous to match the rest of his attributes. Without a doubt, there’s something there worth developing.
Really think his future is as a winger not a full back (like Max Cornet, so Marseille are good at that transition!)
Just no positional discipline and it cost us vital games against Liverpool and Man Utd. Hope he comes back a better player for it.
We won that united game at home!
We lost 3-2 at Old Trafford.
It was the 3-2 loss I was referring to. To my recollection at least two of their goals came from players having miles of space with Tavares massively out of position. I feel he cost us badly in a game I thought we played well enough to win
Think this shows another positive of our change in recruitment – for all his flaws last season there were still a lot of clubs interested in taking him because of his age/potential which is very different from where we find ourselves with others we’d like to move on
Great unveiling video by Marseille. They’re turning out to be a fantastic training facility for Arsenal 😂 Hope he comes back moulded in the heat of battle like Saliba.
We should remember another advantage of loaning a player to Marseille: it is a massive club with big crowds, fanatical support, intense pressure on the players, and a lot of success. Okay, not as good a preparation as winning the Prem four times at Man City, but very challenging for a young player.
Decent move for him. At 22 years old he’ll rapidly improve there – as Saliba and Guendouzi have shown – and he’ll get a handful of Champions League matches too.
Wishing you all the best, Nuno. Set Ligue Un on fire.
im so glad the club doesn’t fancy relying on inconsistent young promises anymore. remember all the screw ups by koscielny, szczesny, ramsey, etc we had to endure. sure they later became very good players, but oh boy it was painful to watch at the beginning. i can’t handle that anymore.
Come back and challenge Tierney. That’s what this loan says. I like it.
Makes perfect sense.
I like the fact that we seem to be developing young players rather than try to shoehorn them into the squad.
That seems to be his level at the moment. He will come back a more confident player.
Good luck Nuno. This is his chance to get a lot of football and for a Champions League club no less. If he does well he’ll raise his value significantly. This had better keep Marseille quiet for a while about Saliba. Getting tired of the noise from them.
They may just do the same next summer for Tavares LOL. Good luck to him!
A good move for all concerned.
I’m a believer in this guy, I think there’s a chance he’ll be back at Arsenal next summer challenging for a start.
Someone should try moulding him into a Gareth Bale type of player. Also started out as a LB with a penchant for shooting and driving forward. Nuno also has a wicked right foot shot on him so who knows.