The next step: Ethan Nwaneri

Ethan Nwaneri going out on loan is in the best interests of the player and I think that has been reasonably clear for a while now. Ordinarily, an 18-year-old struggling for minutes at a club that tops the Premier League and Champions League tables would not be unusual or any cause for concern.

But Nwaneri is clearly not your average 18-year-old footballer. Last season, injuries opened the door for the player and he got a significant taste of first team action. I think it is fair to say that his time as a starter last spring started very well and eventually plateaued a little- which is to be expected given his age.

The important point is that a 17-year-old looked at home in the Arsenal starting line up for any period of time. Arsenal had Raheem Sterling, who has enjoyed an exceptional career, on loan last term and he didn’t manage that at any point. Once a player has had, not just a taste, but a big old gulp of senior football experience, it’s difficult to put that precocious genie back in the lamp.

Marseille is a really interesting move for Nwaneri. The reporting suggests there was plenty of domestic interest in a loan, but often clubs send young talent abroad on loan as part of their individual development, as well as their footballing development. Reiss Nelson and Emile Smith Rowe both had loan spells in Germany (Nelson also had a spell at Feyenoord).

When Smith Rowe joined RB Leipzig, Arteta revealed on the Amazon ‘All Or Nothing’ documentary from 2022 that the decision to send Smith Rowe to Germany was largely governed by his off-pitch development (injury meant he only ever played 28 minutes for Leipzig in any case).

‘When we sent him on loan, I said I’m only going to ask you… I’m not going to watch your games. I only want to hear what people say, about you when you are there, and how they are going to describe you, not as a player, as a person.’ Arteta also revealed that he felt Smith Rowe might have had issues around self-confidence and clearly they felt a loan abroad might accelerate his character development.

You may even recall around a decade ago, when Serge Gnabry was loaned to Tony Pulis’ West Brom. Gnabry was struggling for game time with Pulis critical of the player’s physical condition. Much to the surprise of many, Arsenal did not recall him from his West Brom sojourn since Arsene Wenger felt overcoming that challenge was an important development point for Gnabry.

Arsenal could not hang on to Gnabry in the end, even when they really wanted to. You could argue an unhappy loan spell informed his decision to leave, you could also look at the career the player has subsequently enjoyed with Bayern Munich and suggest his experience at West Brom was formative, even if it didn’t really benefit Arsenal. Developing young talent is rarely linear.

I think you could argue that Nwaneri is good enough to warrant serious minutes at pretty much any other club in the world at the moment. The summer signings of Eberechi Eze and Noni Madueke have limited his opportunities at Arsenal. I think it bodes well that the player wants to go out and play when he could easily (and understandably) view the next few months as a good opportunity to start filling out the ‘honours’ section of his Wikipedia page.

I suspect Ethan going abroad as opposed to taking a loan at a Premier League club suggests the personal development angle is important here. Marseille are a big club who play in front of a boisterous crowd, they are in the Champions League and looking to, at a minimum, preserve that status for next season. Marseille is a demanding environment playing under a demanding coach who wants his team to dominate the ball and dominate games.

De Zerbi can be an abrasive coach, unafraid to speak his mind. This will not be a holiday camp for Nwaneri and the talent level of the player suggests he can deal with the heat. My long-term question is whether the path at Arsenal is ever truly going to open up for him. Madueke, Eze and Odegaard will all be at Arsenal next season unless something drastic happens.

I am sympathetic to the view that Arsenal should prioritise winning trophies and the onus is on players to prove they can play at the level of one of the best club teams in the world at the moment. At the same time, sometimes pragmatic decisions need to be made to allow young talent to flourish. Arsene Wenger elbowed Pires and Vieira to one side to allow Fabregas to emerge. Chelsea’s stockpiling meant they allowed generational talents like Salah and de Bruyne slip through their fingers.

But Vieira and Pires were older than the likes of Eze, Madueke and Odegaard. It feels to me like Nwaneri’s long-term future will depend on Eberechi Eze being a trusted and consistent option on the left-wing- especially since it feels unlikely that Leandro Trossard or Gabriel Martinelli will extend their current deals. It feels to me like the best way forward is for Eze to really own that left wing and for one of Trossard or Martinelli to move on in the summer so Arsenal can recoup some funds.

The biggest roadblock for Nwaneri is Eze being preferred as an interior player. Mikel Merino is also something of a blocker but his age makes that less of a long-term issue. Like Martinelli and Trossard, it feels unlikely that his current contract will be extended in any significant way.

All these things really need to coalesce and there is an extent to which managers sometimes just have to wait and see how the chips fall. That was the case for William Saliba, whose integration into the starting line-up after his own loan spell at Marseille was expedited by an injury to Takehiro Tomiyasu and the fact that Ben White turned into an excellent right-back.

That feels instructive for Nwaneri too, how quickly he can access more minutes at Arsenal feels as dependent on others as it does on him.