December 19th was the last time Eddie Nketiah started a Premier League game. Since that 2-1 defeat to Everton, he has made just three appearances in the 22 games Arsenal have played.
He hasn’t even made the squad for a domestic fixture since the 0-0 draw against Man Utd on January 30th, but did make the bench for three of the four Europa League knock-out games we’ve played so far.
It’s fair to say his stock has fallen considerably – at one point he was actually our leading goalscorer in all competitions – and the striker admits it’s been a tough time.
However, having been named captain of England U21s, he’s viewing that as a real chance to remind people of what he can do.
“It’s been a difficult for last month or so,” he said. “I haven’t played as much as I would have liked. I have been working hard and being dedicated which adds to the frustration but I have a great opportunity.
I have a big tournament ahead of me. In life there are always opportunities in front of you.
The captaincy is a big responsibility. I’m grateful to have this opportunity, have fun and do my best to help the country achieve something special.”
The U21s have three games in the European Championship finals group stage this week, starting with Switzerland today, Portugal on Sunday, and then Croatia on Wednesday.
Eddie, perhaps assisted by Arsenal teammate Emile Smith Rowe, will be looking to extend his record as the record goalscorer for England at that level, and perhaps put himself back into the thoughts of Mikel Arteta.
In all likelihood though, scoring goals will open up opportunities for him this summer as, with just 12 months left on his contract at that point, a decision needs to be made about his future.
Arsenal have not yet looked to extend his deal, so he may well be up for sale at the end of the season.
Would love him to be a success at Arsenal. Tough to do given Laca and Auba are in front of him.
Hope he can find a way to tick upwards, a few goals for the U21s to extend his record would be a great start.
It’s never a straight path, Ian Wright didn’t get into a professional team until he was 22.
Per Wikipedia: After a spell of poverty during which his wife was expecting their first child, Wright spent two weeks in Chelmsford Prison for failing to pay fines for driving without tax or insurance. He recalls that after being locked in the cell, he burst into tears and vowed to God to do everything in his power to make it as a footballer.
doubt eddie will be stuggling with his bills — hes just not good enough at this level–we tried hoped but sadly no , time to move on benik style sad thing is we gave him too many opportunities which could have ben shared with balogun- whom im sure is super peed and will undoubtedly prove himself elsewhere as he is on his way this summer this is why i want arteta out as he cannot mange the players– hes messed up with balogun, saliba , ozil and im afraid hes messing martinelli as well arteta out before he causes more… Read more »
A bit gloomy Gus
Messing with Martinelli? He’s reschooling him to be a Central striker from a winger. It’s basically a young mans dream to play striker for Arsenal… Martinelli is happy. If you paid attention you’d have less Arteta out toxicity. Usually it’s the ones who don’t pay attention who are Arteta out.. and I can’t stand half arsed arsenal fans.
I would say Martinelli is in front of him too…
Similarities in how we’re treating Martenelli and how Pep treated Foden. He’s been gradually getting more minutes and I expect he’ll have a big part to play soon.
It’s good that he’s frustrated. That shows desire to succeed which will only serve him well in the future. It’s clear that at the moment he doesn’t quite have enough to his game to really be challenging for regular first team football for us at the moment. That’s been demonstrated in the games he’s played this year. That doesn’t mean he won’t be a success in the future, but I feel he needs a year long loan so that he can get games under his belt. Even when he was at Leeds he didn’t get huge amounts of game time.… Read more »
Let’s hope he can use his spell with England to further his career, probably away from The Emirates as the article suggests. At the very least, it will present him with a “shop window” for potential buyers as his Arsenal appearances are limited.
I don’t get it.
if Eddie was spanish french Portuguese German Brazilian or similar his u21 record would make him a £40m prospect.
and they say there’s an English premium…
No they wouldn’t
Well, I think we’ll be doing pretty well to get around half of the figure you mentioned for him in the current market. Hopefully this will be an under-estimate but there’s little spare cash around outside of a select few clubs. Good prospect though he certainly is, I’m not sure he’d be on their radar as they will likely be battling it out over the handful of “wonderkids” coming on the market in the summer.
If I’m correct that ‘premium’ is for English players to English clubs.
🤣As if Real, Bayern, Psg, Juve etc would pay £80mil for Maguire!
I suspect he will be sold but it will be for cheaper than what he is worth with only one year on his contract!! I thought we were trying to avoid that sort of scenario moving forward 🙄
Considering Brewster, without a single goal for Liverpool and just 4 appearances for them, went for £23.5m plus all sorts of buy backs and sell ons, I reckon we’ll get… £10m. We seem completely incapable of selling any of our players for any sort of premium. And hell do we need to raise money for transfers
Yes, but any player is only “worth” what another club is prepared to pay at the time he’s up for sale. Clearly, Sheffield Utd wanted Brewster enough to pay that kind of fee for him. That said, Liverpool did get an extraordinarily good deal – very well negotiated by them. A club could want Eddie for more than that, who knows until he’s actually on the market. I hope someone will pay more than the “Brewster baseline” for him, but I don’t think that they will. Very happy to be proved wrong. The problem with a lot of the players… Read more »
This only seems to apply to Liverpool players, though. I don’t remember other clubs getting seriously good money for players who have achieved nothing.
I think clubs get blinded by the fact that Liverpool as a team are so good that they don’t realise that a lot of their players are nothing special. Whereas we’re in 10th, so by extension our players can’t be that great.
Liverpool do it consistently well, agreed, but Aaron Ramsdale costing around the same as Emi Martinez is a bit of a joke. I can’t see why we didn’t dig in our heels and demand 30m, no doubt Villa would’ve paid it. The Ox and Iwobi I think are the only two players we’ve shipped for decent money since RVP
Good point, but Ramsdale at least had a lot of experience at PL and Championship level (not sure what his contract situation was in comparison with Martinez, as well).
Sheffield United are stupid enough to spend £23.5m on Brewster as well, so maybe they’re just crap at buying? They also payed £22m for Sander Berge (not saying he’s not worth it, but that’s a big figure to pay a Belgium club).
Payed? FFS – paid
we did sell iwobi for 30m tho… replaced him with his 80m french version, but we did sell him well nonetheless
Oh yes, Pepe and Iwobi, like to eggs.
We sold Scousers Iwobi and AOC for a combined fee of about £65 million.
At the time one looked slightly under valued and one looked over priced.
Considering the player’s contributions for their new clubs, we pulled their pants down.
Im not even sure Ox did seem under valued as a sell. It was just awful timing, especially coming right after they had given us a drubbing. Twas also a disappointment because after years of him being shuffled around there was scope for him to establish himself in a position as others were set to move on.
Price only seemed questionable after he’ had that outstanding peformace afainst Ciry in the Champions League… but alas that was flash in the pan if not quite unfurtunatly for the guy because of injury
So we have the captains of both the England and France U21s on our books, and it looks like neither will probably be kept on…
Yes. I guess that the bottom line is whether their club manager thinks they’ll fit in (literally) as a team player(Guendouzi), or are likely to be as good as what we already have (Nketiah). It appears to be in the negative in both cases.
Well I suppose the question is, would you be happy to sell our two U21 captains if it financed the signing of the Norwegian captain?
I hope the best for him to help kick on. Others have noted his age, and I think it was presumptive for fans to think he’d just pick up Laca’s goals. As much as that was an overestimation of Eddie’s skills, it was a gross underestimation of Laca’s. I think there could be a place for him yet, but he’ll have to earn it, of course.
I had really high hopes for him following his debut and the manner in which he scored his two goals, but he’s only really that performance in patches since and despite Arteta pushing him ahead of Lacazette for a spell he’s not really pushed on. I’d like to think that he can still cut it at Arsenal but the proof of the pudding etc hasn’t really shown that. With only a year to go on his deal and a lot of work in the market needed I think that he might well be sacrificed along with a few other favourites.… Read more »
Frozen again…
Given his age I’d like to see him kick on and become a success. We’re quick to right him off, but considering his minutes this season have come in a spell where we weren’t creating chances (both Laca and Auba struggled), I think there’s still time for him.
Nketiah is an excellent poacher but hasnt showed enough in the rest of his game. Whatever he does with England under 21s his still going to come back and be 5th choice forward after auba, Laca Martanelli and Pepe
Probably should have loaned him out in January to help bump up his price in the summer. Not clear to me that rhe set up with his agent represnting bith him and Bangolan has served either young player that well