Mikel Arteta spoke about why he had decided to make a half time substitution against Brentford.
**Arsenal**are still at the top of the Premier League despite drawing 1-1 against the Bees at the Gtech Community Stadium. Once more, the offensive unit has come under scrutiny for a lack of efficiency and invention in the final third, and a key figure in the discourse is summer signing Eberechi Eze.
The talismanic ten switched from Crystal Palace to his boyhood team for a fee of £68 million in August, and he hoped to fulfil destiny after leaving Hale End as a 13-year-old. A hat-trick against **Tottenham**in November nailed his name into the folklore of the football club, but the transfer has remained underwhelming for the most part.
He was part of the starting eleven on Thursday evening, and again failed to make his mark, coming off for club captain Martin Odegaard before the beginning of the second half.
Questions continue about whether Eze has the freedom to fully express himself on the field, and the manager made clear that defensive demands contributed to the decision to pull him out of the game.
“With the way, especially that they were pressing, we needed another kind of profile to generate more problems for them around those areas. Martin Odegaard came on in the pitch really well and the team had another gear and more threat to arrive to the areas that we wanted to do and that decision.
“[Ebere] had moments. It's not easy when you move to a new club. It's always like this, and when you play against a team that is like this and the ball is a lot of times not on the floor and you have to be constantly breaking the play and do that, especially for attacking and creative players, it's difficult.”