Having seen Mikel Merino play a key role in our 3-1 success at Brentford on Wednesday, Mikel Arteta believes that he’s now ready to make a real impact in the second half of the campaign.
The Spanish international midfielder popped up with a crucial goal to put us ahead against the Bees on New Year’s Day, on what was just his sixth league start for us since his summer arrival following a couple of unfortunate injuries.
But now fit and firing, Arteta feels that Merino is ready to show everyone what he’s capable of and be a driving force of the team, and at a crucial point of the campaign with nine fixtures packed into January’s schedule as we battle for silverware on four fronts.
Reflecting on his time in north London so far, Arteta assessed: “We expected a very fast integration because he’s played in the league, he’s such an intelligent and experienced player and he fits very well.
“He had an injury and another little niggle, and he had no pre-season because he played for Spain as well and it took him just a while to start to get set.
“But now you can see the impact he has in the team, his intelligence and the goal threat that he offers to the team. Then, more and more will come because he’s a natural leader as well. As he grows in the role, I think we’ll see much more from him.”
Two more new faces in our squad this term have come from a different source - our academy. Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly’s emergences have added two more tools to Arteta’s disposal, and have helped bolster our options as the boss looks to rotate his team as often as possible with fixtures on four fronts.
Both have now started their first Premier League games, and the boss is delighted that Hale End is providing a reach seam of talent - a goal of his since he arrived at the club five years ago.
“The first thing that we want is to look at the academy – can we get what we want in the academy, that’s option number one,” he added. “If we don’t have it there, then we have to look elsewhere. We have to develop our players in different positions and make them more versatile.
“I think [Lewis-Skelly and Nwaneri] are playing because they deserve to, not just down to injuries, but because there are options to play other players. They play because they are good players.
“You can have a lot of talent but maybe that talent doesn’t have space in the squad. It’s something that we have built over the years, to create with the players that were coming through, especially with the spaces in our squad, so we can use the players that we have.
“We have put in a lot of work. Per [Mertesacker] and the team have done a lot of great work, and we are on it. We know the level and along with the system we have at the moment for where they are playing to where they have to come from. The gap is huge, but we are trying to find ways to make sure they can fulfil that gap."
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