Ranked From Best to Worst: Attackers Working With Arteta

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·12 de junio de 2025

Ranked From Best to Worst: Attackers Working With Arteta

With it being suggested that Sesko is Arteta’s first-choice striker to sign this summer, despite having a poorer strike record than a Viktor Gyökeres or a Victor Osimhen, some Gooners have translated that as our manager not being comfortable working with a finished article.

It supports the theory that instead of the Spaniard relying on one player for goals, he prefers to work with a young talent he can mould and develop.Going back to the days of Özil and Aubameyang, the 43-year-old has been accused of not being able to coach personalities. He would rather train youngsters he can micro-manage.

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In his six years in charge in North London, he’s fixed us defensively, making us one of the best in the division. We can now battle and grind out narrow wins.Yet offensively, have we regressed?Last season was a hard watch, resulting in the Emirates going quiet again.We have lost our reputation around the world for being one of the most entertaining teams who will always make chances.

It adds to the narrative that our boss has failed to get the best out of the attackers he’s inherited and has a weak spot when recruiting them.Well, I like a list, so have ranked from best to worst how all attackers have developed under the current regime.

To clarify, this is not in order of quality but their experience under Arteta.How good were they before our captain returned?Did they improve?How successful was his man management?

Bukayo Saka

Mikel Arteta originally continued playing the then-teenager as a makeshift full-back, but once he broke up the Auba–Laca bromance, he started to build his young team around Saka and, before injuries crept in, Smith Rowe. It was a marketing dream.You could argue that Saka is the only attacker our manager has trusted to use his initiative.That could be because of the quality of the player dictating that, but having worked with him from such a young age, Saka has been tactically moulded into the Spaniard’s ethos.While Martinelli is clearly being micro-managed, there appear to be fewer restrictions on our right side.Ben White is allowed to overlap because he knows the man in front of him will track back.Saka will take on his defender, shoot from distance, not just stay out wide, etc.This season I’ve also seen him step up as a leader. The 23-year-old is aware he’s the main man at the Emirates.

(Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)

Leandro Trossard

Every title-winning squad needs a Trossard.All champions have household names that are celebrated, but just as crucial is having talent on the fringes you can trust to come in and do a job.Little could he have envisaged that from the middle of January he would be one of the few available senior attackers at the club, and from February the only one. That meant the expectation changed, and in many ways he was let down that his employers didn’t bring in any help.He’s never going to be the main man who gets you over the line at the highest level.Arguably the best finisher at the club, he was tried in the middle but plays better on the left.You can never question his work rate.

Ethan Nwaneri

Mikel Arteta’s usage of Nwaneri has been inconsistent.He didn’t deem the teenager ready to replace Ødegaard when our captain was unavailable, even though that was the 18-year-old’s favoured position in the academy.Yet injuries in attack saw our manager trust the youngster in a front three, mainly on the right side. For someone so young, he shows personality on the ball, is brave to try things, and not afraid to get things wrong.Strangely though, his minutes were restricted in the run-in. When we needed a goal at home to PSG, he didn’t come off the bench until stoppage time, while not being subbed on at all in Paris.The hope is the youngster was just being protected from being overplayed and not that his boss saw something in training to lose faith.Needs the right support network around him, as some of the comparisons being made about his ability add unnecessary pressure.

Gabriel Jesus

Hard to judge because the Brazilian has been terribly unlucky with knee injuries, and it’s heartbreaking that the moment he was finally finding his mojo again, he got ruled out for the rest of the year.Unfortunately, that will be his legacy at the Emirates.

Kai Havertz

By our manager’s own admission, he originally signed the German as a number 10, trying to overcomplicate our system by having him and Ødegaard playing in front of one DM.As a striker, he does a lot of things well, such as holding up the ball, winning fouls off defenders, and showing great intelligence.Yet he’s not a natural finisher. Often, he would rather pass than take on a one-on-one with the keeper.To be fair to the 25-year-old, all of this evidence was on display at Chelsea at a time when Mikel Arteta was working in England, so it’s not like he wasn’t aware of the player’s body of work.None of this would be mentioned if Havertz wasn’t one of the highest earners in our history.I wrote it at the time we signed him, it could haunt and define Arteta’s career.

Emile Smith Rowe

A year in as a manager, one of Arteta’s early turning points was handing Smith Rowe his first Premier League start.Originally as a number 10, but also occasionally across the front three, the plan was to build the team around him and Saka.The 24-year-old then started to get constant issues with his groin that eventually required surgery in 2022.By the time he returned for the run-in, Arsenal were in an intense battle to chase down Man City. Originally it was thought that Mikel Arteta felt it was unfair to throw the player into a title race after months away and wanted to give him a proper pre-season.Despite proving his fitness by lifting the Under-21 Euros, Smith Rowe still struggled to get back into the Gunners’ first team.Given our manager once had so much trust in our academy graduate, clearly he felt in training that the player has lost his powers since his operation.The irony is, with the injuries at the Emirates this campaign, he would have got more opportunities.

Reiss Nelson

An example of how, because you’re an academy graduate, Gooners will be more patient with you. Suddenly you look up and realise he’s now 26.His agent deserves a pay rise for getting his client a salary of £100,000 a week.That’s why he ended up contracted to Arsenal longer than he should have been.No one is going to pay a transfer fee with those wages, so he’s set for his fourth loan spell.Even after 90 appearances for Arsenal, the midfielder still plays like a competition winner, grateful to be in the squad, making a living until his employers realise he has zero business at this level.Outside of his famous winner against Bournemouth, name me five great games he’s had as a Gunner?

Gabriel Martinelli

Has any Gunner regressed more under the current regime than Martinelli?The irony is, in the dark days of Unai Emery’s last few months, the youngster was one of the highlights.The Brazilian had the bravery to demand the ball, the personality to want to make things happen by directly running at his man, not scared to get things wrong.Clearly though, these are qualities Mikel Arteta didn’t like, skills our manager almost over-coached out of the talent.First, the Spaniard spoke about the player needing to learn when to time his bursts of pace to save his energy.Then it became apparent how rarely he would take on his man, constantly cutting back.Under another system, he could flourish.

Alexander Lacazette

Unlike Aubameyang, there was zero desire to extend Laca’s deal, meaning the Frenchman knew 2022 would be his last year at the Emirates.The irony being, it would be the striker deemed not good enough for a new contract who Mikel Arteta ended up trusting when he fell out with Laca’s buddy.Asked to captain the club in his final months as a Gunner, the forward finally had what he wanted, a platform to start every week and even change his employers’ minds about a new contract.Used to dropping deep and linking up with others, our new skipper seemed to lose his confidence at the one time he had the chance to be the main man at the Emirates.Maybe he couldn’t find the motivation to lead the club back into the Champions League when he knew he would be elsewhere regardless?He failed to score a goal for the Gunners in open play once Auba left and was replaced in the run-in by Eddie Nketiah.

Nicolas Pepe

The Ivorian has since admitted he was crippled by expectation, feeling he was constantly being judged by (at the time) his record transfer fee.As we’ve learnt, Mikel Arteta is not the type to put his arm around you and explain his decision.The attacker famously came off the bench at home to Wolves and helped change the game, yet bizarrely that didn’t warrant him another start all season.Pepe wasn’t the first or last talent Mikel Arteta clearly washed his hands of the moment he felt the player didn’t suit his principles (most likely after a red card at Leeds).Instead of a coach teaching the player in training areas to improve, he loaned him out just to get him off the wage bill before paying him to rip up his contract.Surely, he would have been a better impact sub than Eddie Nketiah or Reiss Nelson?

Eddie Nketiah

One of the first things Mikel Arteta did as manager was recall Eddie Nketiah from his loan at Leeds United (although the club in general felt he wasn’t starting enough at Elland Road).The youngster was trusted to start FA Cup ties at Bournemouth and Portsmouth, more than contributing to our 14th FA Cup.His big opportunity came when he and Lacazette were asked to fire Arsenal into the top four after Aubameyang’s departure, which neither could do.He would mostly start in the Carabao Cup and Europa League group stage, where his goal / game ratio was decent, but on a bigger stage he didn’t do much unless the ball fell to him in the penalty area. Substitute appearances involved him running into defenders trying to win fouls.In our last two title races, our manager stopped trusting him in the run-in. We were paying a striker £100,000 a week to score nine league goals in two years.Another FA Cup medal at Crystal Palace has overshadowed how much the Eagles have wasted £30 million.

Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

Twelve months after paying Özil to sit at home, Aubameyang was another player over the age of 30 with little resale value, paid over the odds to extend his stay in North London.With two of Arsenal’s biggest earners both having their contracts ripped up, you can’t help but feel the Kroenke family had buyer’s remorse and slashing the wage bill was prioritised over what was best on the pitch.The Gunners missed out on the top four due to a lack of firepower, while a striker we had literally given to Barcelona for nothing was scoring for fun in Spain.Could our manager not have found a compromise with the player until the summer, then all parties go their separate ways?That decision cost us a place in the Champions League.

Raheem Sterling

Apparently, Mikel Arteta’s strength at Man City was getting the best out of talent one-on-one in training sessions, with the improvement of Sterling often cited.So when the two had a chance to work together again, it made sense for all parties.Arsenal got an experienced, proven winner who could help a young squad while paying only 30 percent of his wages.Yet it was clear very early on that our manager had seen the player had lost his powers, sometimes not bringing him off the bench even if we needed a goal.The 30-year-old can’t suggest there wasn’t an opportunity in North London to revive his career. From February, our entire first-choice attack was not available, yet still full-backs were ahead of him as attacking subs.There is zero suggestion there was anything wrong with his attitude, but there is a reason Chelsea were not willing to register him to play.The truth is, it’s been years now since he was the version of Sterling we saw at the Etihad.

Willian

Because of Covid, Willian never really got to perform in front of Gooners.Was it due to the pandemic or a younger dressing room compared to the one he left at Stamford Bridge?Bear in mind, the Brazilian had scored 11 times in his last season at Chelsea and, years later, was decent at Fulham.He just wasn’t happy in North London and respectfully has never fully disclosed why he couldn’t settle.He deserves credit for offering to terminate his contract, essentially walking away from a guaranteed £20 million.

Your comments are welcome below.

Dan Smith _____________________________________________________________________________________________

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