Arsenal: Gabriel Martinelli needed just 15 minutes

Gabriel Martinelli played just 15 minutes of Arsenal’s shocking defeat to Olympiakos. That was all he needed to prove just how talented he is.

After what looked like a laboured performance against Burnley before Arsenal’s mid-February, two-week winter break, Gabriel Martinelli was dropped from the starting XI and not involved in the Gunners’ next three matches, two home games against Newcastle and Everton in the Premier League with a trip to Olympiakos in between.

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In the meantime, Eddie Nketiah started both league matches, scoring in the latter, Reiss Nelson returned to the bench after his injury absence, and Nicolas Pepe started to shine on the right side, perhaps suggesting that he was ready to take his mantle as the attacking instigator.

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For Martinelli, it seemed as though the chances to start and shine were being minimised, for whatever reason. During this curious two-week hiatus, perhaps due to Mikel Arteta wanting to rest the 18-year-old superstar as he manages the load the teenager takes on so early in his career, I admit to forgetting just how electric Martinelli has been in his first season in English football. The two-week break allied with a poor performance just before it left a sour memory, and I allowed it stew.

On Thursday night, in the Gunners’ harrowing 2-1 defeat to Olympiakos in which they looked painfully toothless for the majority of the match, Martinelli sat on the bench as he saw an imbalanced attacking triumvirate struggle to link up with any semblance of offensive threat and ferocity. Martinelli sat through 105 minutes of dross. Then, it was his turn to try and turn the tide and provide some attacking ingenuity and umph.

In 15 short minutes, Martinelli did precisely that. Replacing Alexandre Lacazette as the leading centre-forward, the effervescent, inexorable Martinelli was superb. He ran the channels, he chased, hounded, harassed, he collected loose balls, dribbled at — and invariably around — defenders, caused absolute havoc in the penalty area, and was unlucky not to score.

Martinelli was utterly fantastic, and he displayed in that period exactly why I — and almost everyone who had the pleasure of watching him — was so excited about his talent and future throughout this season.

You might ask what 15 minutes can really show you, and that would be fair enough if you were conducting a statistical analysis of such a small sample size. But in this instance, it was not a tactical, analytical or even technical aspect to Martinelli’s cameo performance that was so impressive. It was the manner of it: the movement, the relentlessness, the desperation to cause problems, create chances, and score goals.

Martinelli looked razor-sharp, and he needed just 15 minutes to prove it. It might be time for him to start more regularly.