Are Ethan Nwaneri and Lewis-Skelly being groomed to be Arsenal’s dream midfield of the future? | OneFootball

Arsenal midfielders need to be worried not only by Ethan Nwaneri but also by Myles Lewis Skelly.

Last weekend, Gooners were frustrated Mikel Arteta wasn’t brave enough to play Lewis-Skelly at left back. On Wednesday night, amid a mini-defensive injury crisis, Arteta gave the Hale End Star a shot in the starting 11, and he impressed.

Gooners can’t stop raving about Skelly’s performance in that 3-0 win over Monaco.

The teenage sensation had 53 touches, 45/47 completed passes, four ground duels won, two successful dribbles, and a beautiful pass building up to Arsenal’s first goal of the game.

If you’re talented enough, you are old enough, and this kid has a higher ceiling. The fact that he is originally a midfielder shouldm’t surprise you.

But from how he influences the game, he’s surely way too talented to be wasted at LB long-term. As an apprenticeship, it’s fine, but whoever has to move out of his way in midfield long-term, so be it; he and Ethan Nwaneri will be the guys the Arsenal engine room will be built around.

Mikel Arteta letting young midfielders Emile Smith Rowe and Fabio Vieira go and replacing them with 28-year-old Mikel Merino wasn’t just an out-of-nowhere transfer decision.

He surely was making the path clear for the Hale End duo. That said, at times he may not want to play them, but sooner or later he may have no choice but to.

Nwaneri could be the ultimate Arsenal Right Central Midfielder; some of us Gooners can’t stop highlighting how he’ll replace Martin Ødegaard. On the other hand, Lewis Skelly could be that all-phase Left Central Midfielder that Arsenal crave; how forward-thinking he is and how he naturally creates a lot of underlapping/overlapping runs from the LW could see him flourish in that “Granit Xhaka Arsenal 2022-23 role.”

That said, so why is Lewis Skelly playing left back? He’s playing there (like Saka did at the beginning) so as to develop his all-round game, in terms of positioning, how to track opponents, and how to connect the different areas of the pitch. This is just a development stage before he’s unleashed, and I fully expect him, along with Nwaneri, to be Arsenal’s dream midfield of the future.

Don’t you?

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