Lost the ball too easily: It’s surely time for Arteta to drop this Arsenal star – opinion



Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta might need to have a serious think about Gabriel Martinelli after another below-par display for the club in yesterday’s 2-2 draw with Liverpool.

The Brazilian winger has a fine reputation at the Emirates Stadium after arriving with plenty of expectations on his shoulders as he looked like a real talent for the future, and in the 2022/23 campaign it looked like we were finally seeing him become more consistent and mature with his performances.

However, Martinelli’s form dipped a lot last season and he’s still struggling to get back to his best now, with the 23-year-old emerging with some poor stats from last night’s draw at home to Liverpool.

It was clear from watching the game that Martinelli wasn’t really contributing enough, and the stats back that up, as he was dispossessed three times, and had a pretty low pass success rate of just 61%.

Gabriel Martinelli in action for Arsenal against Liverpool (Photo by Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
 

By contrast, Bukayo Saka was not dispossessed once in the entire game, while Leandro Trossard was only dispossessed once and had a pass success rate of 80%.

On the opposite side, Luis Diaz was also dispossessed three times, but at least had a pass success rate of 90%, while he picked up the assist for the Virgil van Dijk goal.

Gabriel Martinelli – is it time for Mikel Arteta to drop the Arsenal winger?

Martinelli has shown some signs of getting back to his best recently, but it’s still not quite the Martinelli we saw when he was absolutely flying in that 2022/23 campaign.

In truth, Arsenal have probably progressed so much since then that the higher standards in the team mean Martinelli has become a bit of a passenger.

Perhaps he can still turn things around, but for now it would surely make sense for AFC to take to the market for a top class winger as a replacement, someone like Nico Williams.