Arsenal: Eddie Nketiah at crucial stage in his career

Arsenal have a wave of bright young talents that will want to be breaking into the first team soon, and for Eddie Nketiah, his first real chance is right now.

Turning a prospect into a bonafide senior team player is a tough thing to do. There are so many factors that go into converting raw potential into an actual product, and Arsenal have struggled with it lately. They’ve lost out on plenty of “future superstars” both because of poor man management (Serge Gnabry) and because of the bubble bursting (Daniel Crowley).

But Eddie Nketiah is one that will look to break that mold. There is a such thing as have a nose for goal, and Nketiah doesn’t just have that. He has two eyes, a nose and two ears for goal. He just scores all the time.

That has carried on, no matter the level he’s been asked to perform at. Most notably, when called upon to bail out the first team against Norwich City last year, he did just that, scoring twice in heroic fashion to become a cult sensation literally overnight.

Since that time, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang arrived and Alexandre Lacazette bludgeoned his doubts with a meat tenderizer and buried them away forever. We have two world class strikers, and Eddie Nketiah is just a youngster looking in.

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But at Unai Emery’s own admission, the Gunners will be employing more of a youth set-up in the League Cup, meaning that, chances are, Nketiah will get the start against Brentford, which will place him in a unique position to carry the team in his very own competition.

Now, that’s a lot to ask of a young man who has very little senior team experience, but again, Nketiah has always seemed impervious to pressure, capable of shrugging it off with a goal or two and getting on with life. For that reason alone, this is a crucial stage of Nketiah’s career. His next stage is the League Cup (presumably) and that being the case, he can sink or swim at this senior team competition, where he will be called on to provide consistent goals and see the team through to the deeper stages.

The question is how far Emery will let youth take the club. To some degree, there will still be senior players in the squad, you’d have to assume, so hopefully Nketiah will be the tip of a pretty experienced spear.

As far as when he can push on to the Premier League, well, that’s another question, but he’s young, there’s plenty of time to suss out his future.