Arteta: I Am Responsible For Building A Career For Ethan Nwaneri

By The Editor
on 23rd November 2024

Arteta urges caution as Nwaneri shines…

Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has urged caution after yet another impressive cameo from Ethan Nwaneri as he bagged his first Premier League goal for the club.

Nwaneri was introduced 10 minutes from time to replace Martin Odegaard and with the game needing another goal to confirm the result, the 17-year-old produced an emphatic finish.

He becomes the club’s second youngest goalscorer in Premier League history, trailing only Cesc Fabregas who scored his first goal 20 years ago.

Arteta responded to claims that Nwaneri should now be given more starts in big games as a reward for his impressive cameos by urging caution.

The Spaniard is in his first job in management and the prodigy represents the first talent he’s responsible for bringing through from the very beginning.

Arteta takes that job very seriously and doesn’t want to rush the process.

“What I like is that he comes in, in that context, the first thing he does is take a touch, run forward, run past two players and put it inches away from the post,” the boss told reporters in his post-match press conference.

“I understand that, I am responsible for him, and you have to do that brick by brick.

“Today he put in another brick, now we have to put the cement, make sure that it doesn’t get dry, so that he can put in another one and another one and that one is going to stick.

“Then we put one more layer, we want to put five in a row. Believe me, it won’t work,” Arteta added.

The last player to make the journey Nwaneri’s currently on is Bukayo Saka and those blinded by nostalgia have a skewed memory of how the winger was handled by Unai Emery.

The narrative is that Emery through a teenage Saka in the deep end and trusted him – but that is far from the reality.

Nwaneri has already played more minutes than Saka before turning 18 – and the playmaker doesn’t reach that age until March. He’s very much ahead of schedule and in a squad aiming to win a Premier League title, the role he currently has doesn’t differ from case studies from the past.