Sunday’s trip to Fulham will be the first time Arsenal are reunited with Emile Smith Rowe since he left the club in the summer for an initial deal worth £27 million.
The England international, 24, has enjoyed his start to life at Craven Cottage starting regularly as Marco Silva’s main attacking midfielder and scoring three goals and bagging a couple of assists along the way.
After a litany of injuries at the Emirates, the most important thing for the player is that he’s managed to stay fit, ironically at the exact moment Arsenal suffered something of a personnel crisis in the same position.
When Martin Odegaard rolled his ankle in September, many Arsenal supporters questioned the wisdom of sanctioning Smith Rowe’s sale but Arteta insists it was a decision made with the player’s best interests at heart and with one eye on the future.
“It was a very tough decision to let Emile go, especially because personally I feel really grateful for what he did for the club and for me in a period of time that I think he was instrumental to change something around it. But at the end, players have to play.
“He had a lot of difficult moments, a lot of struggles with injuries when we were together and he needed a fresh start. It’s normal, we understood that and we allowed him to go.”
The manager also refuted he was left short of options in midfield when Odegaard was sidelined, pointing out the club were happy to create a pathway for another young talent to flourish.
“No, no, no. We allowed Fabio [Vieira] to go [to Porto on loan] as well because we wanted to create the room and the space for Ethan [Nwaneri],” explained the Spaniard.
“He has given us every reason to trust him. He’s shown that he’s ready to make the next step and it’s great to have him.”
Back fit as of three weeks ago, Odegaard is set to make his 100th appearance as Arsenal captain on Sunday. Arsenal revealed this morning, he has the best win rate (66.7%) of any player to wear the armband on more than 20 occasions.
“He’s a massive player,” reflected Arteta. “He showed again in big matches what he can deliver. The speed that he brings to the team, the quality that he has to play in the way that we have to play. Really happy with him.
“Everybody is unique, Martin is unique. His character, his personality, the way he’s been raised and educated is at the highest level, he’s everything that we want to have to represent our club and the team in the best possible way.”
Having lost at Fulham last year, Arsenal know they can’t rest on their laurels despite coming into the match on a four-game winning streak. The Cottagers are in a decent spell of form themselves, climbing to sixth in the table with a 3-1 win over Brighton yesterday inspired by a brace by another in-form ex-Gunner Alex Iwobi.
“It’s always a really tough place to go. [They have ex-Arsenal players] doing very well as well, which I’m very happy for them,” said Arteta. “Reiss [Nelson] is still one of our own, but the rest as well it will be great to see them.”
The Gunners are currently sweating on the fitness of defenders Gabriel Magalhaes and Riccardo Calafiori who were both subbed off during the 5-2 win at West Ham on Sunday and didn’t feature against United. The manager says he’ll wait until after tomorrow’s training session before deciding on their availability. Neither trained outside today.
Does Vieira have a future at Arsenal? Is Nelson allowed to play against us? Still hurts to see Iwobi and ESR not playing for Arsenal. Both players have Arsenal DNA.
It hurts a little, but it’s the best thing for them. Neither would be getting regular starts for us.
Still happy to see Hale End success in other places — just hopefully not too much this particular Sunday.
To me ESR is the only one that hurts because I think without the niggles and injuries he is a real talent. The team have outgrown players like Iwobi and Fabio
Nelson is ineligible to play against us, just like our backup keeper Neto is ineligible to play against Wolves.
*Neto is unable to play against Bournemouth
not only that it looks like he came off with a possible hamstring issue yesterday after having played a good match. I hope he heals quickly.
Iwobi was lucky to have benefited from Wenger’s “there is something mature in his game” philosophy. Would have had no chance under Arteta. In good form these days, scored two goals this week, about half of his total at Arsenal.
Fabio Vieira is an incredible footballer with a rare talent for two footed ball striking. As a pure 10, he’s a goldilocks player. Arsenal are not going to build around him when we have Saka and Odegaard in a similar age bracket and Nwaneri coming through. He needs to go to a team like Everton where he will be surrounded by physicality and platformed to us his ball striking; essentially an upgrade on Dwight McNeil. Nwaneri is already a superior player simply because of his physicality. Running power, contact resistance, ball carrying, dribble volume are all in his favor over… Read more »
This. The slamming of Fabio from our fanbase is such a failure to understand both talent development and the context of a player within a team during that development. The only thing that I think can prevent Vieira from having a very good career is if he continues to get injured in key moments when he’s just starting to gain form, otherwise he just needs to find the team where he can own that 10 role, playing similar to Kai whenever Kai drops further back to the 10, marauding into the area to pick up passes and shoot or give… Read more »
Viera is a “Goldilocks” player?! You’re having a laugh mate. Although maybe you’re right actually…he does play like fkn Goldilocks although she could tackle better.
Viera is a “Goldilocks” player?! You’re having a laugh mate. Although maybe you’re right actually…he does play like fkn
Goldilocks although she could tackle better.
A Goldilocks situation or effect is where very particular conditions are required… not too hot, not too cold, just right. (Earth is in a Goldilocks zone btw). I invoked that for Fabio because he needs to be platformed that way. He’s not a winger, he’s not a striker, he’s not a midfielder, he’s a traditional 10 who needs physicality and runners all around him.
Do you ever have a reasonable worthwhile take? You got so excited you had to spout this nonsense twice
You think I typed it twice? Sorry for writing what 99% think…as usual…
To the people who think Arteta isn’t giving Nwaneri enough opportunities…
Loaning Vieira and selling The Smith shows just how much Arteta rates the lad.
And with all due respect to Vieira, Nwaneri has probably done almost as much as him in 3 months of substitute appearances than Vieira managed in two years.
Why do I feel like we are going to see at least 20 mins of Ethan at Cravendale now?
Arteta’s strategy for developping young players is perfectly examplified by Saliba. It made no sense at the time why we were sending him out on so many loan moves just to keep buying defenders (Gabriel and Ben White). But when he finally came, it was clear that he was 100% ready for first team football in the premier league.
If you mean Saliba was 100% ready *because of* the loans then I agree with you Piga. I saw several of his games for Marseille for example and there were a few shaky performances in there. So much improvement since then.
Didn’t he win Ligue 1 Player of the Year there? As a defender no less. Couldn’t have been that shaky then…
Impossible to remember a time when it didn’t seem sensible to keepyl buying defenders
Our manager ……….Sir M Arteta, puts player welfare and development, ahead of his own reputation.
The club of course does eventually benefit but it takes balls to play it this way and the support of the club structures and fans is essential.
Bravo everyfuckingbody……….
Love ya for getting us to this level so far.
More to come🙏
Sorry, Arteta wanted to get rid of him and buy his own players and this makes sense for a new manager. He changed his mind because of the quality and development Saliba had shown and his breaking into a big national team. Also makes sense for a top manager.
Lol, why is this getting downvoted? It was pretty obvious.
I know “In Mikel we trust”, and yea, he knows way more than we do.
But I feel like the fanbase has come to think he’s some kind of God-like genius (which I guess makes sense given that the phrase itself is subbing Mikel in for God…).
That’s true – and also Saliba threatening to demand a transfer if Arsenal were not serious about bringing him to London. Arteta was not convinced about him at the beginning…
So what you’re saying is when Arteta came in he didn’t want him initially because he wasn’t convinced Saliba was at the level so he loaned him out. Twice. And while Saliba was on loan the club monitored him. And once he was ready, Arteta brought him in and he has started since. Sounds like proper evaluation of an 18 year old CB with no PL experience.
and can you tell me how 30+yr old willian with PL experience went?
Cravendale?
MOOOOOOOOO
But Wenger said he sold Cole to give opportunities to Clichy. Hope that was only a jab at Cashley.
That sounds more like a jab at basic common sense and logic.
Clichy might be the least memorable footballer for Arsenal to have played as many games as he did. He was just good enough not to draw your ire but never good enough to make you love him. Never did anything remarkable or weird. I almost forgot he existed entirely until I took some of those quizzes about French players on the .com recently.
While clearing a path for Nwaneri makes some sense, letting ESR and Vieira go without replacement still leaves us short in that position in my opinion. Still think we need one more player that can provide creativity in the middle of the park.
I think if ESR was around in the early stages this season, we’d have collected a few more points than we did. Of course with the benefit of hindsight
Yes, definitely the benefit of hindsight. Odegaard had been remarkably injury free up to then.
It also ignores that we need to look out for what is best for the players as well as the budget and funds that selling ESR brought in. We can’t afford to have expensive players sitting on the bench and still spend on upgrades.
I wouldn’t even say it’s hindsight, I was shocked that we let both ESR and Vieira go in the same window. One of them sure, but not both unless we were bringing someone else in.
Didn’t we bring Merino in?
I think the main probkem is Jesus lack of form. Because with a proper striker I think Havertz could play that position very well, like he did at Leverkusen.
I think even with Havertz with midfield he never replaces the Odegaard creativity and we could do with one extra creative in the squad
Hmm I dunno. At least as far as I’ve seen at Arsenal, Havertz is far more effective as a 9 than a 10 or 8. Would rather we brought in another Odegaard type and kept Havertz up top.
100% – it’s all well and good saying he let them go because he trusts Ethan, but he clearly doesn’t fully because he didn’t start him. Which I get, he’s 17, if you’re going to let others go to clear a path for him though you have to let him play. Fingers crossed Ode stays fit as Ethan develops and we don’t have that problem again.
Nwaneri has played more minutes than most of us expected at the beginning of the season, but probably not as many as he should have considering all of the problems we had without Odegaard.
In one counterfactual, we keep Fabio and he serves as another small space associator while Odegaard is out. As a more senior option than Nwaneri, he plays more minutes than Nwaneri did during Odegaard’s injury, maybe helps us score more goals, maybe we win one of those games at Newcastle or Bournemouth, or maybe we still don’t, but it’s hard to argue we wouldn’t have been better equipped in those games. So I understand the line of criticism completely. But consider the flip side of that counterfactual, and the more likely scenario at the start of the season. We keep… Read more »
I understand that argument but it’s not as if Nwaneri was starting games in Odegaard’s absence, outside of the league cup. Those “Vieira” minutes went to a mishmash of Trossard and Havertz which barely functioned at all against deep blocks. So if we had kept Vieira, or better yet bought an upgrade, it may not have affected Nwaneri’s minutes significantly.
Ethan currently can’t play 90, so if you put him in the MO role and leave the set up the same, who subs for Ethan after 60 minutes. The manager changed the build up, the set up, how we attack the goal because Ethan couldn’t play 90. Now that MO is back, Ethan is playing because the team is set up again tactically to platform MO and he just slots in. Has nothing to do with trust and everything about how we had to play differently without MO because we knew he was going to be out for awhile.
You’re spot on, LC.
Arteta made a huge mistake in letting ESR go without replacing him. If he trusted Nwaneri so much then why didn’t he play him when Odegaard was injured?
Our bad start to the season due to Odegaard’s absence may well cost us the title. And that’s on Arteta.
The logic leap that ESR would’ve replaced what Odegaard provides is absolutely false. I’ve made this point over and over on here: they are nothing alike. ESR is a big space runner/dribbler with a knack for arriving into shooting positions, suspect off ball awareness and discipline. Odegaard is a small space orchestrator who greases the buildup and provides the final ball for others who is also the key instigator of our entire off ball structure.
They’re completely different! It’s not even close!
Thanks, Doc. Totally agree.This zombie narrative won’t die.
Yes, they are very different players, but they play in the same position. At least ESR did before Odegaard came to Arsenal. They both connect midfield and attack, one through dribbling and short passing, the other more through creative passing and unlocking space for strikers. But it was always hard fitting both into the same team.
I don’t agree that he is a connector. He is a progressor, but that is different. The former is a reference for his team, sets the tempo, has a high pass and touch count, is counted on by his team to be available. ESR is a dribbler who progresses the ball, much like Martinelli. In fact for a while there they had a time share on the left because they are similar types of players.
ESR may not be the same type of player as Odegaard but fuck me even Stevie Wonder could see he would have been great to bring into the team while MO was out. Small space associators (I can’t believe I just typed that 😂) are so last decade dear…
No, he would not have replaced Odegaard in any meaningful way. Fabio Vieira might have and I wrote about that further up.
Dear…lol you are very irritable today. I know you like to be negative in every situation but maybe ESR would have gotten injured when we relied on him to replace odegarrd like every other time.
While I don’t disagree with the points you have made, I do want to remind you of how well ESR and Saka played together when they first came into the first team in forward positions. They had an understanding and complimented each other very well. Yes different than MO, but still effective. Viera doesn’t have the physicality to play in the PL and Arteta wasn’t going to play him. If we had kept ESR and MO didn’t get injured, we know ESR wouldn’t have played much. As hard as it was, Arteta let him go because players gotta play. Hindsight… Read more »
I haven’t forgotten but the team was in a totally different point of its evolution then. The team desperately needed someone, anyone, to be a threat between the lines, to play with dynamism and to score goals. ESR does all of that. I rated him then and I rate him now. He’s just not Odegaard, never has been, never will be. He needs to play the type of football we did then, more on the break, because he’s not that good in static play or in the counterpress. He needs a team that wants to run instead of control, and… Read more »
The Arsenal is a “one person short” team long time ago. Nowadays we’re getting bored of top two finishes. 😁
People talking about ESR playing the 10 role. Remind me an EPL game he did and did well as 10. He’s not the type of player that can control the tempo of a game nor create chances. He’s similar to Trossard who failed in that role but still managed to score 2 or 3 goals.
Spot on, Tim!
Maybe letting ESR go is a mistake that could cost us the title. But I am very biased cause he is my favourite.
Howard Webb and PGMOL are the mistake that could cost us the title.
Straight from the Wenger school of philosophy. Humanity first approach.
That way you gain loyalty, as well as self motivated players who wish to repay your faith and belief that they didn’t know they had.
Look at Saka, would his belief have crumbled playing under Unai? It likely would have. He would probably be playing left back running the entire left side attack and defence. Just like how Bellerin got destroyed and making Niles swear never to play full back again
Mikel is a gem of a manager and developer.
Fabio’s loan deal was a grave error! He wldve been a direct replacement for Odegaard considering Arteta reluctance to give Nwaneri full playing time in the team.