Ethan Nwaneri arrived at Marseille on a half-season loan and delivered an immediate impact, scoring on his first start while prompting an early reminder from his manager about workload.<\/p>\n
\u201cNatural\u201d was the word which Ethan Nwaneri\u2019s new Marseille teammate Pierre-Emile H\u00f8jbjerg used to describe the Arsenal loanee\u2019s swift adaptation to his new surroundings. The 18-year-old was selected ahead of Mason Greenwood, who dropped to the bench to make way for the Arsenal youngster. Greenwood had played the full 90 minutes against Liverpool three days earlier and remains Marseille\u2019s attacking fulcrum with a team-high 20 goals across all competitions; no one else in the squad has yet hit double digits.<\/p>\n
Amine Gouiri put the hosts ahead inside three minutes before Nwaneri produced his moment. Collecting the ball just inside his own half, the diminutive left-footer jinked forward, dropped a shoulder to shift the ball onto his stronger left foot and curled his shot into the bottom corner. The strike was his first league goal since last April and capped a well-rounded display from an attacking midfield role slightly right of centre. L\u2019\u00c9quipe awarded him a 7\/10.<\/p>\n
Roberto De Zerbi insisted that the debut and goal would not mean unchecked minutes. He confirmed Nwaneri will not feature in Wednesday\u2019s Champions League league phase finale, explaining the decision is to avoid overworking the teenager. De Zerbi said the player was \u201cso good\u201d he \u201cdidn\u2019t need training\u201d before starting so soon after the loan was confirmed.<\/p>\n
Mikel Arteta had not once named him in a Premier League XI this term, and he stressed the Marseille move was shaped by more than one factor. \u201cRoberto is there and he\u2019s an incredible developer of young talent,\u201d the Arsenal manager said. \u201cHe\u2019s a really courageous manager in the way he plays with young talent as well. He has a big track record about that, and I think it fits the way of playing for the qualities that we want to see for Ethan. So it\u2019s going to be a great experience for him.\u201d<\/p>\n
De Zerbi\u2019s post-match mood shifted from on-pitch celebration to sharp words in the press conference. \u201cI know how we played,\u201d he said. \u201cI don’t have to convince you.\u201d He added: “I said that if I had a French passport, it would be different,” he argued. The manager\u2019s stance makes clear the coming weeks will be closely managed despite the promising start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nwaneri scored on debut, labelled \u201cNatural\u201d, but De Zerbi stressed caution over his playing minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6229,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1163],"tags":[1081,1305,1047],"class_list":["post-6230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-transfers","tag-adaptation","tag-bench-selection","tag-champions-league"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6230","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=6230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}