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Ethan should still have a wide role at The Arsenal

Suburban Gooners Logo Suburban Gooners Logo Given that we play them at home at the weekend, I really hope that Forest’s decision to sack Nuno Espirito Santo in the early hours of this morning have a destabilising effect on them for when they rock up at the Emirates on Saturday lunchtime. Let’s hope that it doesn’t galvanise them and we can profit from what’s going on there, which is a club who have an owner who feels very command and control if you ask me. He was picture berating Nuno last season towards the end of it on the pitch, he was the driver behind Forest getting Europa League football when it should have been Palace, plus there was that bizarre hostage-style video when Gibbs-White signed a new deal. When you add to the mixer an Edu who had clearly checked out last summer given what went on in our summer transfer window compared to this one, it really does make for quite the rap sheet of that owner and I hope we can inflict some pain on them this weekend coming.

I’ll be in Greece just as we kick off, having got a flight to Santorini at 9am, so I’ll miss the first 30 minutes, but the second we touch down I’ll be firing up my phone to watch the remainder. Hopefully we’re a goal or two up by then (fingers crossed).

Whilst I’m flying out this week, our players will be flying back in and yesterday evening we had yet more players serving their international sentences, with Big Vik on the end of a big shock with a 2-0 defeat to Kosovo. I don’t know why, but given that the world rankings are universally deplored as being a waste of time, defeats like this – or just any match playing a smaller country – always end up with the world rankings being referenced. I saw it with Andorra game and my instant instinct was to have a look at Kosovo and Sweden’s respective world rankings. It’s 29 for Seeden and 95 for Kosovo, by the way…

Anyway, Big Vik played the full 90 and, I guess much like with Odegaard and playing himself back in to fitness, that’s probaby a good thing. Most of us have said that he still doesn’t look 100% and a little sluggish at times, despite the fact that we’ve played at Old Trafford and Anfield as our first two away games of the season. Not exactly easy places to go where you won’t exactly get a ton of space as a striker, but by all accounts last he had an okayish game if you go by the stats. Had a couple of shots (one on target), created two chances, managed 44 touches, which is on the low-to-medium side for an average Premier League footballer in a game (they normally manage between 40 and 80 touches depending on various stats), had a couple of take-ons and won four duels. I haven’t watched any of the game but by all accounts not a fun night for him or Sweden and we all have to hope he takes it out on Forest in a few days time.

Riccardo Calafiori will also be heading back to the UK and thankfully he wasn’t even involved in Italy’s dramatic, late five-a-side-style game against Israel. 5-4…sheesh…bet that was fun for ‘the neutral’. I don’t care; as long as he’s fit, comes back fine and doesn’t injure himself on the plane by having the metal cutlery in first class fall on to his lap and shattering his knees, I’m all good. Back you come Ricci, let’s have no more of this international nonsense for a while, eh?

In the under-21s I saw Ethan’s fine finish for England against Kazahkstan and that will do his confidence a world of good methinks. There were some suggesting that the introduction of Dowman ahead of him on that right wing was a little bit of a knock for last season’s starlet, but I didn’t think I’d read too much in to it. As I said yesterday, I kind of get the feeling that this was almost to ‘get it out of the way’ with Dowman and with him having got some minutes at Anfield and understandably not been able to shine, I think it was a reminder to us all of the difference between Leeds at home when you are cruising and Liverpool away. Questions can certainly be raised given the noises over the summer were Arsenal see Ethan as a central player but I don’t think that means we won’t ever see him in those wide positions again. I think Arteta will still use him at times to come on from those positions and I think that’s right too; he showed last night he still has that eye for goal and at 18 he’s more advanced than Dowman. If you’re going to throw a Hail Mary late in games I still think Ethan from wide positions is a very viable option. I know there is Noni, Bukayo, Trossard, Eze and Martinelli in those positions, which may look a little crowded, but Ethan offers something different to all of them and I would still have him as a wide forward option this season. Let him ply his trade as a versatile player across the attacking positions, Mikel.

Today we’ll be able to get Norway and England matches out of the way and hopefully we get a clean bill of health with Odegaard, Rice, Eze, Madueke and Lewis-Skelly. With those players returning tomorrow, it’ll mainly be the Brazilian boys we need to worry about, who play Bolivia at 12.30am UK time in the early hours of tomorrow. That’ll be a Brazil team with Martinelli in it, who has this last week been talking about the arrival of Eze and competition in Brazil and Arsenal, welcoming it and saying it doesn’t bother him. At this stage you can take him for his word, because he’s starting for Brazil and he started against Liverpool. But his form has – as we’ve all noticed, dropped off in the summer and he wasn’t great against United or Liverpool. I do think Arteta loves him and wants to use him, but he’s a ruthless man and I suspect that this weekend it might be an Eze who starts and Martinelli is relegated to a place on the bench. If that happens, then whether it is a changing of the guard or not we’ll have to see, but Eze’s cameo against Liverpool was promising. Martinelli might like competition and be ok now, but unless his end product starts delivering, he’ll quickly find he’s out of the team on a more regular basis and that can quickly lead to footballers looking elsewhere for minutes when you get to the top tier of the football pyramid.

Right, that’s me done for today, so I’ll be back tomorrow with hopefully no lamenting news about how an anvil has fallen from the sky onto Declan Rice’s ankles.

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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.