Gabriel Martinelli has found out how uncompromising Mikel Arteta can be when the Arsenal manager decides a player no longer fits the direction of travel.<\/p>\n
Arteta has long carried a hard edge, something Neil Banfield once noted when reflecting on the coach\u2019s temperament. \u201cHe\u2019s got a bit of Ars\u00e8ne about him,\u201d Banfield said of Arteta during an interview with The Athletic . \u201cThe similarities are in the character they are. You don\u2019t mess with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martinelli is the latest to discover that. After reportedly resisting the club\u2019s attempts to move him on this summer, he was left out of matchday preparations. That situation was then deepened by his Community Shield oversight and, more recently, by his omission from the matchday squad for Friday\u2019s Premier League opener against Coventry City.<\/p>\n
Arteta has made clear that change is part of the job. \u201cWe all know, everything has a start and has an end,\u201d he said earlier this week when discussing departures of established players. He also stated: \u201cWe need to bring more skill and quality to the squad.\u201d For a winger built on pace rather than subtlety, Martinelli appears to have been caught in that shift.<\/p>\n
His best scoring season came in 2022-23, when Arsenal were still able to exploit space before rivals settled into deeper defensive shapes. In recent seasons, though, that space has largely disappeared. \u201cThere\u2019s no space to run,\u201d Arteta said at the time. \u201cWhen you\u2019re sitting in traffic, I want to go 100 miles an hour but I have three buses and 55 taxis and motorbikes around me, so it\u2019s tricky.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last season, Martinelli managed only 11 Premier League starts and scored once. With Arsenal seeking to raise funds and already carrying Christos Tzolis and Eberechi Eze, plus the possibility of another left winger arriving, his future has come under obvious pressure.<\/p>\n
Arteta has handled difficult exits before, including Mesut \u00d6zil, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Bernd Leno and Aaron Ramsdale. In this case, however, some supporters feel the process has been too blunt.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou need to face that reality,\u201d Arteta said. \u201cBut you need to face it with real honesty and transparency because when you are on the other side, that\u2019s exactly what you need. You might not like what you\u2019ve been told, but if it\u2019s truthful, if it\u2019s the reality, if it\u2019s honest and it\u2019s going to help you to make better decisions and have more clarity for the next steps in your career, you have to do that. These are always very difficult conversations, but they need to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ian Wright, though, said Martinelli has \u201cnot been spoken to\u201d and \u201cdoesn\u2019t know what\u2019s going on.\u201d He added: \u201cWith respect to Martinelli and the way Martinelli\u2019s been treated at the moment, it really makes me feel uncomfortable,\u201d before stressing, \u201cHe always gives 100%\u2014not saying he\u2019s the greatest\u2014he\u2019s really come up with some big moments for Arsenal, some big games and scored some very important goals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way he\u2019s been treated at the end here … there\u2019s ways of doing that, and it should suit him as well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Martinelli faces an unforgiving reality as Arteta reshapes Arsenal and questions over treatment grow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18683,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1303,172,1397],"tags":[1836,180,182],"class_list":["post-18684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal-news","category-epl","category-transfer-news","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-player-news","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}