Arsenal: 3 improvements Eddie Nketiah must make to be starting quality

Arsenal has a striker conundrum, but Eddie Nketiah could make it a lot easier if he can make these three improvements and prove himself.

Perhaps the most interesting storyline to follow at Arsenal these days, as the season winds down to a close, is what will happen with the striker situation. As it stands, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette are both on pace to leave, which would leave Eddie Nketiah as the sole striker barring subsequent moves.

Of course, if the Gunners do pull off a small miracle and make it into the Champions League, that all might change. Then maybe Aubameyang stays and Lacazette leaves, or if they make the Europa League, Lacazette stays and Aubameyang leaves, whoever knows. It’s a mess that needs sorting.

But the one consistency throughout is that Eddie Nketiah will be at the club and he will be aching for more trust from Mikel Arteta so that he can be the starting striker that his side needs. That won’t come easy though, as we have high expectations for our strikers.

Arsenal needs these 3 improvements from Eddie Nketiah

So, with that in mind, there are three main things that Eddie Nketiah has to improve on if he wants to take that step up.

3. Rapport

So much of a striker’s success comes from the service he gets from his teammates. It’s one of the reasons why new strikers often take a little bit to get settled at a club—they have to build that rapport with the players around them. They have to get on the same wavelength, where they understand each other without having to wait for it and talk about it.

Nketiah doesn’t have that at Arsenal yet because he just hasn’t been around enough yet to build it. The good news for him, though, is that all the guys he’s going to want to build a rapport with—Nicolas Pepe, Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli—are all new too. The rapport building goes all around the spectrum. Which plays in Nketiah’s favor, because we’re building something new.

But that rapport can be building even now, and hopefully it is. The sooner the better. Give us someone that won’t cost a ton of money and will carry us for a while.

On to No. 2.