Arsenal: Eddie Nketiah and the Ian Wright knack

Eddie Nketiah is scoring goals again, this time for England under 21s. And again, they look simple, but they most certainly are not. He has the goalscoring knack of that Arsenal great, Ian Wright.

If you were to watch a highlight reel of Ian Wright’s goals for Arsenal, you would struggle to see how he was such a great player. He regularly lost control of the ball before recovering it, his finishes appeared scruffy and a little fortunate, and he rarely scored sensational, jaw-dropping goals like the man who overtook him as the club’s record goalscorer a decade later.

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What you would see instead is a series of seemingly simple goals. Tap-ins from within the six-yard box, runs in behind to convert one-on-ones, flicked finishes at the near post and scrappy finishes from poor clearances. It was almost as if Wright was lucky to score 185 goals in 288 appearances.

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But Wright was most certainly not lucky. As they say, ‘you make your own luck’, and Wright’s positional acumen, anticipation, speed of thought and movement, and nous for where the threat would develop helped form his own luck. Wright was as natural a born goalscorer as they come. He knew how to create and find space, he did not want the ball outside of the final third, and he was lethal in front of goal.

These types of players have often been overlooked in modern football. Sergio Aguero has rarely been seen as one of the true elite centre-forwards in world football, partly because his style does not suit the spectacular, but rather the relentlessly consistent. Like Wright, he has a knack for scoring, and he does at an insanely productive rate. And Arsenal youngster Eddie Nketiah is very much built in the same mould.

https://twitter.com/England/status/1170055596122488832

Nketiah is currently on loan at Leeds after choosing to drop down to the Championship in search of regular football. He has already scored three goals for the Whites. And now he is doing it on the international stage too. As the England under-21s recovered to beat Turkey under 21s 3-2, Nketiah played another crucial role, scoring the first two goals for his country. Like Wright, they looked simple.

One was a simple tap-in at the far post — it was reminiscent of his goal for Leeds against Salford City, which is not an accident — as Phil Foden played a lovely square ball across the six-yard box. How could Nketiah ever miss? The other was also assisted by Foden, the Manchester City man drifting inside from the right flank, finding Nketiah, who had cleverly split the Turkey defence with a nice run, to control the ball with his first touch and then score with his second.

Very much like Wright, who Nketiah has said is now mentoring him, the 20-year-old’s goals look easy, almost lucky. But being in the right place at the right time is no luck. There is terrific skill in anticipating where the chance will fall and ensuring that you are in position to take advantage. It is a natural knack, and Nketiah unquestionably has it.

Some strikers are just born scoring goals. Very few in the history of the sport have been better than Wright. And now Nketiah is taking after his hero, which for Arsenal, is incredibly exciting indeed.