Morning all.
Mikel Arteta will meet the press around lunchtime today to talk about our game against Liverpool tomorrow night. I don’t think there are any particularly pressing issues for him to discuss. Whisper it, and touch wood at the same time, but our bill of health is relatively clean going into this one, so much so that at the weekend, Ethan Nwaneri didn’t even make the match day squad.
That prompted quite a bit of discussion, hand-wringing in some quarters, and it’s something James and I talked about on the Arsecast Extra this week. For me, it’s quite simple. He’s 18 years of age, and Arsenal have a very deep squad full of quality players in their prime years. It’s normal that a young man who is still developing is the one to miss out in that context. It doesn’t mean he’s not talented, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have incredible potential, and it doesn’t mean he’s unwanted or unrated by the manager or the club.
Here’s the reality for Nwaneri right now: the club have decided they want him to play centrally, which means unless there’s an emergency and we need him there, he’s going to have Bukayo Saka and Noni Madueke ahead of him on the right wing, a position they want him to move away from. He played there last year because Saka had a bad injury, and Raheem Sterling was just not up to the level. He did well, scored some goals, but let’s not ignore the fact he was probably pressed into action ahead of schedule because of those circumstances.
Now, in those central areas, he has the club captain Martin Odegaard to compete with, as well as 27 year £65m summer signing Eberechi Eze, European Championship winner Mikel Merino, and the irreplaceable Declan Rice if we we’re talking about the left and right 8s. You could possibly even include Kai Havertz as another obstacle in the second half of the season. The pressure is well and truly on Arsenal to deliver silverware this season, and I think any manager would default to that kind of quality and experience ahead of a young player who hasn’t really played in that part of the pitch too often.
I will say, I think he’s acquitted himself well when he has played there, but you can also see that there are still things he has to learn. Which again, is entirely normal when you’re just 18. The demand this summer was for Arsenal to learn the lessons of previous seasons and go out and build a deep squad that could compete across four competitions, as well as deal with the inevitable injury absences. Clearly though, even in the 9 sub era, there were going to be casualties of that.
Imagine, and I know it’s crazy, we get everyone fit at the same time, it will mean experienced players won’t make certain match-day squads, and that’s a reality we have to come to terms with as fans. If it’s Nwaneri, or Christian Norgaard, or one week it’s Cristhian Mosquera or Myles Lewis-Skelly, or even one of the plethora of forwards, we have to learn to accept that and not make a massive drama of it. You wanted depth, you got it, but there are only so many players a manager can pick every time. And if this is an issue, a problem which requires careful man-management, that’s Mikel Arteta’s problem, not ours as supporters. We have enough to worry about, and we’ve worried about far worse than this, let me tell you.
The flip-side, of course, is how Ethan Nwaneri feels at the moment. I suspect not great, although he must understand that as one of the youngest players in the squad, this was always likely, especially after the signing of Eze. Arteta called it a ‘challenge’ for him last week, suggesting it was just a normal part of the process for a young footballer. Do you rise to it, or sulk? I suspect that both he and Lewis-Skelly are being tested a little bit by the manager in that regard. He had a big taste of first team football last season and would have wanted more, but it’s rare for the trajectory of a player of his age, at a big club like Arsenal – and especially a team as competitive as this one – to be completely linear.
Where I think Arsenal need to be mindful though, is the playing time he’s missing that could be crucial for his development. While I would be quite tempted to hold onto him to preserve that level of depth, a January loan move makes a lot of sense to me. How much could he learn elsewhere? How much could he develop physically as a player, and as a person? We’re all so invested in Ethan and Myles because of their Hale End pathway, but you could easily see how Nwaneri might benefit from a change of environment.
I don’t want to say ‘comfort zone’, because that’s not it at all. You don’t make it to where he’s made it at his age if that’s the case, but a different pressure, a different dressing room, different expectations etc can open your eyes a bit as a player and a person. It wouldn’t be just football experience, but life experience too. And I do wonder if someone like Arteta, who decided to leave Barcelona for PSG then Rangers, then left his hometown club to sign for Everton, will view that, or Nwaneri’s willingness to discover that, as important for his Arsenal career.
At 18 he has so much still ahead of him. As others have pointed out, he’s already played more first team minutes than Bukayo Saka did at the age. He has time on his side, and plenty of talent at his disposal. I don’t want to say a loan now would be the making of him, however it would give him a first team opportunity he probably won’t get at Arsenal right now, and make him more ready for it in the not too distant future. Let’s see what happens.
Right, I’ll leave it there for this morning. We’ll have press conference stories on Arseblog News later, as well as a Liverpool preview podcast on Patreon this afternoon.
Until then.
