Arsenal have a player who is becoming impossible for Mikel Arteta to ignore

Arsenal results suggest that Mikel Arteta has done a pretty good job of dealing with injuries and suspensions so far this season. Performances say something a bit different.

The big caveat here is that three of eight Premier League games have been played with at least half an hour spent down to 10 men. Analysing patterns and levels from these matches becomes effectively impossible or worthless from the moment the game state changes.

Unless Arsenal plan on doing this as regularly as they currently are, then it is hard to really know where this group are at and how things will move forward. Maybe the 2-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain is a good barometer, but then again, even the victory over Aston Villa away from home - a match played with Martin Odegaard - could easily have gone the other way.

There is simply a lot of noise from the opening two months of the season. Red cards, injuries, a tough fixture list, and yet they remain in the mix. To what extent Arsenal are as inevitable or impressive as the past two seasons is very much still in the air, though.

Arteta is not seeing his side blow teams away and they have been more reliant on magic from David Raya than they would like. The foundation of an elite team is the defence, but this has been something else entirely.

The games against Southampton and Leicester City raised some serious worries, for example. Is that the real Arsenal? Or is it the one from the first fortnight before Declan Rice's dismissal against Brighton? In some ways, they haven't been the same since.

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Circumstances have seen many back-to-the-wall displays, covering for a lack of Odegaard, Rice, Bukayo Saka, and even Mikel Merino. Jurrien Timber and Riccardo Calafiori have been out themselves. Things have been tricky.

Constant disruptions really haven't helped. What is starting to become clearer through all of this is that an injection of energy is needed. The Emirates Stadium has become too used to needing last-ditch efforts to win or save matches. The intensity demanded by Manchester City's relentless excellence makes it all such a tiring existence. To do it all again would be superhuman.

The inspiration in these moments can be hard to find. One player who seems to do it is Ethan Nwaneri. Now, this is a 17-year-old who doesn't turn 18 until March. He is very much a kid. Do not forget that, just because he made his Premier League debut two years ago, he is still pre-breakthrough, really.

That is not the sort of joy and impact he brings along with him though. There is a tangible uplift whenever he goes to warm up, let alone actually get onto the pitch. Nwaneri is at the stage that in otherwise unspectacular Carabao Cup draws at home to League One sides where the Emirates Stadium crowd has a night off, he is a genuine draw and magnet for attention. Something to go and watch.

The sample size remains absolutely tiny with Nwaneri yet the correlation grows. Leandro Trossard is not the natural Odegaard replacement (nobody thought he was), and Raheem Sterling has not made the sort of impact in attack that had been hoped either. Nwaneri deserves more.

He hasn't yet come on before the 80th minute and is unused during the Champions League. When there is nowhere else to turn for Arteta, all other options falling down injured or failing, one presence remains.

Nwaneri is starting to become an unignorable prospect and lure. The way he got supporters buzzing against Leicester should not be cast aside. Given the chance from the start in a youthful team at home to Bolton, he already looked head and shoulders above his teammates in experience and maturity.

This talent deserves and needs to be unleashed. Maybe Liverpool are not the side to do it against but Arteta runs the risk, if Nwaneri is not trusted more and more in the coming weeks, of putting himself in a hole. Such is the pressure and expectation of each individual game, it is easy to only look one step ahead.

Keep doing that and everything in the peripheral vision is lost, the chance to increase Nwaneri's game time passes, and Arsenal have cut an already small squad down by another player due to simply not bedding someone in. That would be inexcusable.

With Nwaneri now ingrained in the senior squad, his opportunities to express talent have been severely damaged. At 17, the question is whether having him around the first team is enough, or whether flourishing at Under-21 level and UEFA youth standards is a better use of his time.

The real answer, if things continue, may well be a balance. Nwaneri must be integrated into an increased playing role sooner rather than later under Arteta, that is for sure, but also cannot really be going weeks on end without significant action, no matter how valuable the sheer osmosis of being around Kai Havertz and Odegaard might be.

Right now the issues at hand outweigh just Nwaneri, and maybe explain his position. There isn't much choice but opening up to the teenager, though.

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