Shaktar the perfect opportunity for Ethan Nwaneri to start

Morning, welcome to a brand new week, and if there is a silver lining about the result on Saturday, it’s that we have a chance to put it behind us very quickly.

We’re in Champions League action tomorrow night against Shaktar Donetsk, so there’s no option but to put Bournemouth in a box and focus on that. Mikel Arteta will meet the press this morning, and I’m sure he’ll echo some of the comments he made after Saturday’s game.

He was asked how the team bounces back, and said:

Using the pain we are feeling at the moment for Tuesday, that’s the best way to do it. Not feeling sorry for ourselves, how it happened again three times in eight matches and we are missing our captain and one of our best players and Jurrien and this and that. That’s not going to take us anywhere – leave the energy, these boys deserve it because the way they try and want it, we go again on Tuesday.

Which is absolutely the way it needs to be. Every team can have a bad day, every team can lose a game in this league, but it’s how you respond – and how quickly you respond – that really matters. Tomorrow night won’t necessarily scratch the Premier League itch, but a good result and performance would obviously be a boost ahead of Liverpool on Sunday.

Given the distance between Tuesday and Sunday, I don’t think we’ll see quite as much in terms of rotation as some people might think, or indeed like, but there’s one player I would really love to see start tomorrow night: Ethan Nwaneri. I’m conscious of the idea that putting too much pressure on a 17 year old can be counter-productive, but based on what we’ve seen from him so far this season, this feels like the perfect opportunity for him to start a top-level game. He is the epitome of that adage about how if you’re good enough, you’re old enough.

He did start the EFL Cup win over Bolton, scoring twice let’s not forget, but a first Champions League start would be another little step forward in his development and reputation. I think if I were to poll Arsenal fans to ask if they felt he was ready for this, the result would be unanimous. As I said in yesterday’s blog, I think he should have come on earlier against Bournemouth, and the same applied when we were trying to break down Leicester a few weeks ago.

What struck me about his short cameo on Saturday, is just how much of an impact he can make when on the ball – something the team is badly missing in the absence of Martin Odegaard. There was a moment when he picked up a clearance deep in our half, and as the opposition players closed him down, he took it on and threaded a beautiful pass out to Gabriel Martinelli on the left hand side. It was done at pace, and with pinpoint precision. Shortly afterwards he drove towards goal and was harshly punished by the referee when the Bournemouth player fell over his own feet.

These moments stand out in the dying stages of a game we were chasing because they offered a little bit of hope on a night when we struggled to create. Some of that was the fact we were a man light, but some of it was because the midfield trio of Thomas Partey, Declan Rice and Mikel Merino lacked the kind of zip that Nwaneri brings. To be fair, Rice does it in a different way, often driving from deep, and Merino set up Martinelli’s good chance, but generally speaking that is a functional, more than a creative, midfield.

If we’re 2-0 up against Liverpool and you want to close out and control a game, that’s the kind of set-up that would make you feel pretty comfortable. If you’re trying to rescue a game or create goalscoring chances, not so much. And these glimpses of what Nwaneri can produce are tantalising. If that’s what he can do in a short space of time, it’s exciting to think what he could offer over the course of 90 minutes.

I really think him starting tomorrow’s game is a low-risk, high reward kind of situation. It’s taking nothing for granted about the opposition, we still have other options on the bench if we need to make changes, and even if he doesn’t have a great game, it’s still an important step in his development. In the absence of Odegaard, Arteta has tried to win games differently, which I understand, but for this one, he should go with the closest analogue we have in the squad, and that’s Nwaneri. We can all imagine the benefits a good performance can bring to the team, but how it might benefit the player himself is an important consideration too. I really hope it happens.

Right, I’ll leave it there for now. We will have an Arsecast Extra for you today, of course. We’ve put out the call for questions on Threads @gunnerblog and @arseblog with the hashtag #arsecastextra – or if you’re an Arseblog Member on Patreon, leave your question in the #arsecast-extra-questions channel on our Discord server.

Pod should be out around noon. For now, have a good one.

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