Arsenal: What can Mikel Arteta do for Gabriel Martinelli?

Arsenal will soon see the return of Gabriel Martinelli, who hasn’t even suited up under Mikel Arteta yet. What can we expect to change?

Things changed when Mikel Arteta came to town. You may have noticed. All of these Arsenal players suddenly looked like they cared, like they wanted to be there. And they did all of it without arguably our most talented young player Gabriel Martinelli.

Martinelli sustained an injury just before Arteta took over, so he missed the initial revolution. While we were watching crazy things like Mesut Ozil being a reliable presence for an entire 90 minutes, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang playing leftback, Martinelli was on the bench, healing.

Now that he is back and likely to suit up against Leeds United in the FA Cup, the question is what Arteta can do for Martinelli. He’s done so much for everyone else that surely the young Brazilian can expect an uptick in production as well.

Honestly, I don’t think that’ll be the case. The big thing with Aubameyang and Ozil was that they’re production had dropped off. They weren’t putting in the effort, they weren’t showing a lot of determination. They were just biding their time until they could leave.

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That was never the case with Martinelli. From the moment he arrived, Martinelli has looked every bit the eager youngster, but also with enough composure and ability to convince Unai Emery that he was ready to be a Premier League regular.

Lo and behold, he was.

So I don’t see anything changing with Martinelli. At least nothing astonishing. Which is more of a testament to his ability and work ethic than it is anything else. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, right? And Martinelli is absolutely not broken.

All Arteta needs to do for Martinelli is keep the opportunities coming. As long as he does that, we are going to see him getting better and better, without any drastic intervention required. At least not yet. We don’t need to convince him to defend. he does that already. We don’t need him to have a better attitude, he already does.

I will always refer to Martinelli as one of the big things Unai Emery got right. I could not have been happier with how he used the young man. As long as Arteta can keep that going, then I’m not worried. And Arteta is a smart man, there’s no reason why he wouldn’t.