Arsenal: Gabriel Martinelli a rare Unai Emery highlight

Against the odds, Unai Emery struck while the iron was hot with Gabriel Martinelli, and the young Arsenal man shows no signs of slowing down.

Arsenal are doing a whole lot of the same things lately, and it’s mostly bad. We have Unai Emery to thank for that. He hasn’t been making a lot of the right choices, both in team selection, and in man management in general, but I can’t fault him for his handling of Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka. And the whole youth set-up, honestly.

In fact, if anything, that’s cause for praise, as Emery has been more than willing to give youth a chance in most situations this season, but Gabriel Martinelli is a special case.

It shouldn’t be hard to start the hot hand, and I already talked about how Unai Emery deserves props for benching Nicolas Pepe. But Martinelli has been more of a long-term project, and you can easily track Emery’s intentions throughout the process.

Martinelli was Emery’s first signing of the summer. He was given high priority as a sub early on, but nothing to gain any traction with.

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Then he scored two goals against Nottingham Forest, and everyone started paying even more attention. Then he scored two more an added an assist against Standard Liege. At this point, you might have seen Martinelli thrown into the first team picture more, but Bukayo Saka was a little ahead of Martinelli on a development level, so Emery did the respectable thing, didn’t rush Martinelli, and let Saka have the chance.

Still, you could see steady progression. His first two Premier League matches amounted to 17 and 6 minutes, respectively. After notching four goals and an assist, his next two Premier League matches amounted to 27 and 12 minutes, respectively. Still not enough to get a great read, but there was still room for improvement.

Three goals later, two of which were scored against Liverpool, and Martinelli grabbed an entire half hour against Wolverhampton and made it a very positive showing to boot. He is getting better, and he’s seeing his exposure increase, and this all comes down to Emery’s steady progression and usage of the young man. A highlight for Emery, in a season of struggle.

This is a positive sign going forward. Now, as far as why Emery had to come out already ask say that that Martinelli has no future as a striker is beyond me, but hey, you can’t win them all.