Arsenal: Understated Eddie Nketiah still making his case

Eddie Nketiah was not the star of the Qarabag show, but he didn’t have to be. He has a specific directive at Arsenal and he’s following through.

Arsenal‘s wave of youth against Qarabag was the only thing that kept that match remotely interesting. Between the individual inspiration of Bukayo Saka and the midfield drive of Ainsley Maitland-Niles, the potential was abounding.

Such that Eddie Nketiah gets a bit buried in the spotlight-grabbing of Saka, who truly ran the show at the Emirates.

Which is perfectly okay. If anything, it’s better than okay. Eddie Nketiah doesn’t need to grab any spotlights. Honestly, he’s already done that. He’s been on the cusp of more first team action for awhile now, so there’s no pressing need to see him going off the cuff, changing the world with each touch.

What we need to see from Nketiah is exactly what he is showing us – reliability, consistency, maturity.

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I’m gushing over Saka, as are so many others, but realistically speaking, Nketiah was as steady as a regular senior player against Qarabag, the same as he was in the previous match against Vorskla. He hasn’t scored a goal in either of those two matches (though his disallowed goal against Qarabag was quite sweet nonetheless), but he’s been doing other things. He’s been dribbling, passing, hell, even defending, and it’s shown growth and maturation in his play.

That is what we need to see from him – proof that if the club were to trust him with filling Danny Welbeck’s shoes, that he could be able to follow through and do the job that is given to him.

Welbeck didn’t score all the time, he didn’t always wow spectators with flourish after flourish, but we still knew that the potential was there for it. What made Welbeck so great was his reliability. We always knew what we were going to get out of him and he rarely failed to deliver.

Nketiah is much the same. We know what he is capable of in the goal department, and we are seeing more and more how capable he is with the ball at his feet, even as a winger. But he is showing us now that he can be counted on to play a role, to do a job. And that is the best thing to see.

Where he goes from there is anyone’s guess, but start with establishing a foundation, a baseline, and there is only one direction to trend – upwards.