Arsenal: Gabriel Martinelli is a solution for the now, not just the later

Arsenal fans may have been hesitant to get too excited about Gabriel Martinelli, but it’s safe to say that you can go ahead and throw that hesitation to the wind.

Arsenal‘s only singing thus far into the summer is Gabriel Martinelli, but after just one preseason performance, I’m willing to forget everything I thought I knew about signing teenagers and believe that this guy has a big part to play in the first team in the coming season.

When Arsenal sign a teenager from an obscure league, fans used to know the drill. Don’t get too excited, we’ll see where he stands in three years or so, but just don’t make that big a deal out of it, because it’s a wild card.

Even with Matteo Guendouzi to point to, a fellow teenager from an obscure-ish league who blossomed at the Emirates and gave us so much to be excited about. And even with the urgency with which Edu made sure that the Gunners secured the young Brazilian. The allure of Gabriel Martinelli was still… lacking.

That’s in part due to the fact that he is thus far our only signing of the summer. But it’s also just the nature of the move. Cheap. Obscure. Young. Isolated. It doesn’t add up to much beyond, again, a wild card.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

• 3 standout players from 1-0 victory over Everton
• 3 positives & negatives from Goodison Park victory
• Arsenal vs PSV preview: Prediction, team news & lineups
• 3 talking points from Arsenal’s victory at Goodison Park
• Mikel Arteta provides Gabriel Martinelli injury update after Everton win

And then he took the pitch against the Colorado Rapids.

Sure, it’s only a friendly, and I’m not going to blow that out of proportion, but just because it’s a friendly doesn’t mean that it takes anything out of the players. Especially when they have something to prove.

Gabriel Martinelli played this match like his life depended on it. He was one of the hardest working players on the pitch in the first half, constantly flying up and down his right flank to play his part in the defense and the attacking side of things.

Maybe there’s still a bit of rawness there, but the same was true of Guendouzi and he showed how well those blips can be massaged out of his game throughout the course of the season, as he continued to improve through exposure and first team appearances.

There’s a lot of chatter about what the best course of action is with Martinelli, but from the moment he signed, and now seeing it first-hand, I think it’s clear. Give this man the same shot that Guendouzi had and call him a solution.