Ethan Nwaneri scored his first Premier League goal for Arsenal as Mikel Arteta’s side beat Nottingham Forest 3-0 to secure a first league win since October 5.
Arsenal had the ball in the net after five minutes at the Emirates Stadium when Jurrien Timber bundled it home from a free-kick but Mikel Merino was judged to be offside from the initial header. There was no escape for Forest 10 minutes later when Bukayo Saka exchanged passes with Martin Odegaard then danced across the box before firing in the opening goal.
Thomas Partey was sent on by manager Arteta at half-time to replace Jorginho, who had been booked, and the midfielder scored from distance on 52 minutes to cement Arsenal’s grip on the game. And in the 86th minute, 17-year-old academy graduate Nwaneri scored four minutes after coming on as a substitute — a moment he will never forget.
Jordan Campbell analyses the key talking points.
How excited should fans be about Ethan Nwaneri?
The game had gone into a lull in the 20 minutes after Arsenal made it 2-0 but Arteta knew how to inject a new lease of life into the contest
He brought on 17-year-old midfielder Nwaneri, which sparked the crowd into life. He had not even made it onto the pitch when a chorus of “He’s one of our own” began ringing around the Emirates.
Nwaneri is still gently being introduced to the Premier League but in every appearance he is showing flashes of the brilliance that made him the youngest ever player to appear in the competition two years ago as a 15-year-old.
He only had 15 minutes to impress but he wasted no time. Within his first few touches he produced a stepover to dance away from one defender before cutting inside and another and curling the ball inches wide of the far post.
Nwaneri celebrates his first Arsenal goal (Photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Nwaneri soon went one better when he stabbed the ball home from close-range to round off the scoring and net his first league goal.
He has scored three goals in his two League Cup starts this season but this should be the first of many for a talent who is showing he is able to contribute whenever called upon.
How much better does Odegaard make Arsenal?
After missing twelve games with ankle ligament damage, it would usually be safe to presume that the returning player may need a few games to find his sharpness and regain his rhythm.
Martin Odegaard scoffs at such lowly expectations.
The Arsenal captain followed up his comeback game against Chelsea before the international break — a full 90 minute performance and a clever assist — by being head and shoulders above every other place on the pitch against Forest.
“Martin brings everybody together, he has this capacity with and without the ball,’ said Arteta this week.
“He has this charisma, leadership and that’s why he is the captain. He has the intelligence to make everybody better and make everybody click.”
It is not hyperbole to say that Arsenal looked like a team transformed compared to the stale showings in his absence.
Whether it was his chipped free-kick delivery in the fifth minute that led to Leandro Trossard’s offside goal, the deft flick ten minutes later to set up Bukayo Saka for the opener, below, or the blind nutmeg on Nicolas Dominguez to spring Arsenal from defence into attack, Odegaard was at the heart of pretty much everything.
He is the conductor of this team and no part responds better to his presence than Saka. The winger has been a frustrated figure lately and has struggled to find himself in space but he gave Alex Moreno a torrid time and looked so much more willing to be direct, possible because he was seeing the ball so regularly
Odegaard solves so many of his problems in how he can draw opponents to him and combine in tight triangles around the box. The duo were constantly looking for each other, as the best players tend to do, and there was one moment in which Odegard was still able to find him even though he was falling over, facing his own goal and on his weak side.
Breaking down Saka’s dribble
Odegaard’s flick was a key part of Saka’s goal but it’s worth looking at just how far he travelled with the ball before smashing in Arsenal’s opening goal.
Saka collects a high ball with his back to goal on the right side of the Nottingham Forest box and turns away from goal towards the sideline to protect it.
Saka then turns inside and plays the ball to Odegaard, who delivers his smart pass for Saka, who runs across him before collecting the ball again in the middle of the box.
Saka draws three defenders and jinks clear and then fires back across goal into the opposite top corner.
Why was Jorginho replaced?
There was a surprise when the teams re-emerged for the second half and Jorginho was not present.
The Italian had helped bring a tranquility to Arsenal’s play alongside Odegaard but he had been playing on a yellow card since the 24th minute when he brought down Anthony Elanga on the break.
Arsenal have been forced to play three games a man down due to red cards. The loss of Declan Rice and Leandro Trossard saw them pegged back against Brighton and Manchester City, while William Saliba’s early sending off against Bournemouth resulted in a convincing defeat.
While the reason for his removal is not yet known, Arteta may not have wished to risk a fourth in just twelve games and so made the proactive decision to sacrifice Jorginho.
If so, it was decisive management and underlined how important a comfortable victory was for Arsenal after a run of four league games without one.
It may not have been necessary had Arsenal converted their dominance into goals and given themselves a bigger cushion but controlling the controllables is all Arteta has been able to do during what has seemed like a never-ending carousel of injuries. Now he has nearly all his players back, this was a luxury he could afford to take by bringing on Thomas Partey.
It paid off as the Ghanaian midfielder whipped a sublime first-time shot past Matz Sels to kill the game off just seven minutes into the second half.
Is this Arsenal’s best full-back combination?
After Arsenal’s dominant 2-0 win over PSG in the Champions League at the start of October, it felt like the moment Timber and Riccardo Calafiori had claimed their status as the first-choice full-back combination.
But Forest was the first time Arteta has been able to deploy it since.
That run of eight games was blighted by niggling injuries to various full-backs and meant Arsenal could never find the consistency of selection that has been key to their past two title challenges.
They have only been able to name the same full-back pairing in back-to-back league games three times this season.
Every single conventional full-back option has either missed periods out like White, Timber, Calafiori and Oleksandr Zinchenko or they have been missing the whole period in the case of of Takehiro Tomiyasu and Kieran Tierney.
Timber’s goal was disallowed but his performance was impressive (Photo: Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
It has been disruptive to Arsenal defensively but also in an attacking sense. Trying to find a rhythm and fluency has been difficult with Timber switching back and forth from left-back to right-back but against Forest he and Calafiori looked assured and brought the perfect balance to the team. It is no surprise that Arsenal controlled counter attacks much more effectively.
Timber linked intuitively with Odegaard and Saka down the right, replacing the combination play that White has been part of for so long.
Both players inverted at times, too, which allowed Trossard and Saka to access the ball far more easily than Arsenal’s wingers have in recent times.
What did Mikel Arteta say?
We will bring you this after he has spoken at the post-match press conference.
What next for Arsenal?
Tuesday, November 26: Sporting Lisbon (A), Champions League, 8pm UK, 3pm ET
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(Photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
