10th youngest scorer in PL era overall. Future is bright

“What I like is that he comes in and in that context the first thing he does is take a touch, runs forward, runs past two players and put it inches away from the post,” said Arteta.

“I am responsible to build a career for him. You have to do that brick by brick. Today he put another brick. Now we have to put another cement, make sure it doesn’t get dry so we can put another one and that will stick.

“Then we put one more layer, one more layer. If you want to put five in a row believe me it won’t work.

“We have to manage not only his expectation but his load as well, which is really important.”

And addressing the expectations around such an exciting talent, Arteta continued, “I will try to educate him, raise him, and give him the pathway that we believe is the best.

“His family, his agent, his friends, they will be very important as well. Don’t listen too much to the noise, focus on what he does which is to play football and he loves every minute of it and good things will happen to him for sure.”

Much as we want to see him maybe patience and nurturing is the best route. There’s no doubt though that if he keeps performing in the same way he’ll be getting siginificantly more mins by the end of the season.

    The kid has all the tools to be a big big player. Early signs are very good, lets hope he continues to go from strength to strength.

    MistaT At minimum, it feels like we should be giving him 25 mins per game in either Saka or Odegaard's spot.

    We've been saying this since he made his first appearance this season and it's beyond time now. Half an hour when we're ahead, his body can take it and his ability demands it. Meanwhile Saka and Ødegaard need to play less.

      He actually reminds me of Oxlade Chamberlain in how he immediately puts the opposition on the back foot with his aggression and directness. How he impacts game when starting will be interesting to see, as those qualities are better served coming off the bench.

      daredevil What does a professional manager know about load management and nurturing talent?

      The idea that managers attend correctly to load management is absolutely flawed. Managers, including Arteta, very commonly play their "best" options into the ground.

      To insist on load management as a reason Nwaneri couldn't get one hour of playing time out of every six total hours Saka and Øde are on the pitch has an absurd vibe. The two more senior players have been dogged by injury in recent times.

          Load management is an absolutely ridiculous reason not have played Nwaneri. I don't believe anyone here actually legitimately believes that's why he hasn't been used more.

            Qwiss don’t know if its load management, but what is consistent across managers is that they typically play superstar youth much less than than fans would like. Everywhere yoh look it’s the same.

            At the end of the day, he’s on track to play more minutes than Foden and Saka befor 18, and he’s one of the 10 youngest premier league scorers ever. The clamour for him to play more is amusing. I love the player, but fine with his use so far.

                I mean we've been told it's load and expectation management so I can only assume it's load and expectation management given just how much Arteta raves about him as a player.

                Sure, he probably could have played 350 mins rather than 250 mins without it really impacting the above, but that's neither here nor there really.

                  goon I can only assume it's load and expectation management given just how much Arteta raves about him as a player.

                  We've been playing like shit, and Saka is Arteta's go-to match winner and he's got a long history of leaving Saka out on his legs hoping to squeeze out results. And that is why we haven't been seeing too much of Nwaneri.

                  Plus Arteta felt like he needed to work through all his other senior options out there, even though they've all been less effective than Nwaneri.

                    Clrnc same Barca full of injured and washed out teenagers?

                        Claudius yup the one that's topping the league and helped Spain to the euros victory.

                            Clrnc sir, you’re taking an outlier as well who is probably the best teenager anybody normal has seen since Messi as the example of why we need to play a child.

                            And prior to this, we consistently had one of the 16 youngest squads in all of Europe (including places like Austria and Holland where teams are young) when Arteta focused on Saka etc.

                            People were annoyed Saka wasn’t in the FA cup final. He seems to be fine now as far as I can tell.

                                Claudius People were annoyed Saka wasn’t in the FA cup final. He seems to be fine now as far as I can tell.

                                People aren't worried about Nwaneri stagnating if he doesn't play a few more minutes, so not sure where you're going with this. The question is if Nwaneri playing more would've helped us.

                                    QuincyAbeyie we looked shit. I doubt we would’ve solved significant structural issues that the team had. We had an Odegaard sized hole. Nobody is filling that, certainly not Nwaneri.