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Did Martinelli already hit his ceiling? Does he need to re-invent himself?

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo That Fylham game still rankles me, you know, because it feels like even if we’d have sneaked by with a 2-1 and that goal at the end of the game that was chalked off for VAR would have stood, we’d be in a pretty decent position right now. We’d be on a winning streak in all competitions, talking about how we’re free scoring with 20 goals in six games, in a great position to chase down Liverpool. It’s funny how one simple moment has had an impact in the general feeling for me personally, which was that Martinelli was not looking along the line enough to stay onside. He does that and stays onside and I think we’re all looking at Liverpool and saying they are very gettable. All we’d need is for their 100-point pace (or something like that) needs to slow down a bit, whilst we maintain our momentum.

On Martinelli, his is a curious case, methinks. So far this season he’s made 21 appearances in all competitions, scored four goals, made three assists and played a total of 1,361 minutes. That’s an average of 65 minutes per match. Last season, which I think we can all agree was a disappointing one for him, he made 44 appearances in total, got eight goals and five assists, playing an average of 60 minutes across that time. So his current pace of around one goal or assist every three games is similar to last season. We’ve all loved how he broke in to the first team, we’ve loved how he played in 2022/23 with 15 goals and six games across 46 matches (a goal every two games), but given his current ratio that he’s on for this season, if it continues along that trend, is that 2022/23 season the outlier, rather than what we all thought it was, which was him exploding on to the scene to become our left winger for the next six to eight years?

I guess the big question is: Where is Martinelli’s ceiling?

I hadn’t really given it much thought until Wednesday night, when I was sitting next to my old mate Johnny and we were talking about Martinelli. In one passage up in our corner in the second half, he picked up the ball on the left, used his pace to drive past the defender, but he had his head down and he flicked what was to be fair a decent ball, but there was nobody there. It sailed over every players head and in to the other corner of the pitch to become a loose ball turnover. Johnny had been talking to me about his frustration with Martinelli and I had been telling him he’s a little harsh on the kid. But Martinelli isn’t a kid any more in footballing terms. He’s 23 years old, he’s been an Arsenal regular in the side for four season’s now, in which he’s made over 30 appearances in all competitions and played over 2,300 minutes in total each season. Even this season he’s got enough minutes to suggest that if he stays fit, he’ll be tracking on for around 3,000 minute mark. That’s first team regular status and at 23 we need to be seeing him showing that he’s incrementally improving each season to reach a peak.

Now, to be fair to him, perhaps he has the misfortune of playing in a position where on the other side of the pitch we have arguably one of the top five players in the world right now. Saka’s numbers are phenomenal and they get better and better each season. And perhaps to be fair to Martinelli, there is no Martin Odegaard on his side as much. As promising as Merino has been, he’s not going to be the guy to be forming those neat triangles with Martinelli as Saka does with Odegaard and White, or Timber, or Partey. When Martinelli thrived in 2022/23 he had Gabriel Jesus drifting over to that side and interchanging with him, so the loss of form and exiting of the team for Havertz might have also have had an impact. But if you want to make it in Arteta’s ever-evolving team, you have to be able to adapt your game based on your surroundings. Martinelli should not be relying on Gabriel Jesus to recapture his form; I think most of us acknowledge that his time is rapidly coming to an end at The Arsenal, so if Martinelli wants to continue to be in the plans and not fall the way of the likes of Zinchenko or Gabriel Jesus, it does feel like he might need to re-invent himself in this team.

But what does he re-invent himself in to? And can he actually do that with Mikel Arteta potentially giving him explicit instructions to play a certain way?

I don’t really have the answers. You, like me, have probably posited that he could play as a number nine running in behind off the shoulder. But it doesn’t seem as though Arteta wants his centre forwards to be that guy. Think about the job he asked Lacazette to do (poorly), then how Gabriel Jesus would drop in to be link up as well as centre forward when he first joined. Then, in our current iteration, it’s Kai Havertz, as we all know. I can’t see Martinelli doing the same job as Havertz as a number nine. So it looks like his position is left wing. So what does he do? Is it as simple as working more on his vision? Looking up when he gets to that by-line? Working on the accuracy of his low ball crossing? Gabriel Jesus played the perfect pass for Saka on Wednesday night from that left wing position – could you imagine Martinelli doing that? It might just be my recency bias of the Monaco game and other games, but I’m not so sure.

I feel like it sounds as though I’ve been having a bit of a dig on Martinelli this morning, but I really do hope he can recapture that 2022/23 form. He was more of an end product merchant and maybe the answer is as a simple as him going on a run of scoring in consecutive games to kick start a period of confidence. But the numbers so far for this season as well as last season paint a mildly worrying prospect that perhaps this is the real Gabriel Martinelli and the outlier was the first time we challenged City for the title.

Hopefully I’m wrong though.

Back tomorrow with some pre Everton, post press conference, thoughts.

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Gooner born in 1982 from Harlow, Essex, now living in Uxbridge. I say what I see - frequently wrong, but hey, it's just an opinion piece, right? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.