Arsenal: Eddie Nketiah doing everything he needs to

Eddie Nketiah has been prolific thus far for on his loan at Leeds. The Arsenal youngster is doing all he must for a successful campaign.

Arsenal developed a ‘transition team’ for a reason. They recognised the difficulty young players were encountering as they looked to make their way in senior football and felt that introducing a collection of coaches and systems designed specifically to aid them would change their fortunes.

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One of the young players they had in mind when developing this new coaching team is centre-forward Eddie Nketiah, a young talent who has been in and around the squad for several seasons but never been able to force his way into the first-team thinking with any regularity.

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Concerned that Nketiah would again endure a season in which he was not used regularly, which is more likely with Unai Emery’s anticipated move to a lone-striker-based system, Arsenal decided to loan out the 20-year-old. There was a vast array of clubs interested in his services, including from across Europe, but in the end, after an extended search through many possible landing spots, Nketiah eventually settled on Championship club, Leeds United.

The reason was fairly simple: Leeds offered a clear and positive path to playing time and personal development. But despite Marco Bielsa keen to bring Nketiah to the club, Nketiah still needed to prove that he is capable of playing on a regular basis. Bielsa and Leeds are striving for promotion. They are not just going to hand out minutes willy nilly.

Good thing, then, that Nketiah has made a storming start to life in Yorkshire. He may be yet to make a league start for the Whites, but in 29 minutes of action in the Championship, coming off the bench on two occasions, he has already scored once. Nketiah has also scored twice in EFL Cup action as well.

This week, he spoke about the mentoring that Ian Wright has given him in recent months, praising the character and input of Arsenal’s former record goalscorer. And it is noticeable in his play. Nketiah’s goals this season have been remarkably simple: two tap-ins from close range and a good finish after a goalkeeper kicked a clearance straight into his path.

These seem like unsustainable, freakish goals, but they are precisely the type of finishes that excellent goalscorers notch time and time again. Wright was sensational at it, incessantly poking and prodding the ball past goalkeepers, his movement providing him with what looked like very easy finishes, but in actuality, there is terrific skill in creating such chances and then converting them under pressure.

Through his knack for scoring goals, then, Nketiah is doing precisely what he must: he is impressing. Hopefully, as the season progresses, he will be handed more opportunities as a result. If so, Arsenal’s transition team will be having the desired effect.