Ethan Nwaneri scored his first Premier League goal for Arsenal as Mikel Arteta’s side beat Nottingham Forest 3-0 to secure a first league win since October 5.
Arsenal had the ball in the net after five minutes at the Emirates Stadium when Jurrien Timber bundled it home from a free-kick but Mikel Merino was judged to be offside from the initial header. There was no escape for Forest 10 minutes later when Bukayo Saka exchanged passes with Martin Odegaard then danced across the box before firing in the opening goal.
Thomas Partey was sent on by manager Arteta at half-time to replace Jorginho, who had been booked, and the midfielder scored from distance on 52 minutes to cement Arsenal’s grip on the game. And in the 86th minute, 17-year-old academy graduate Nwaneri scored four minutes after coming on as a substitute — a moment he will never forget.
Jordan Campbell analyses the key talking points.
How excited should fans be about Ethan Nwaneri?
The game had gone into a lull in the 20 minutes after Partey made it 2-0 early in the second half but Arteta knew how to inject a new lease of life into the contest. He brought on homegrown midfielder Nwaneri, which sparked the crowd into life. He had not even made it onto the pitch before a chorus of “He’s one of our own” began ringing around the Emirates.
Nwaneri is still gently being introduced to the demanding world of the Premier League, but in every appearance he is showing flashes of the brilliance that made him the youngest ever player to appear in the competition in September 2022 as a 15-year-old.
He only had 15 minutes (including stoppage time) to impress today, and he didn’t hang about. Within his first few touches, he produced a stepover to dance away from one Forest defender before cutting inside another and curling a shot inches wide of the far post.
Nwaneri soon went one better, stabbing the ball home from close range to round off the scoring and net his first league goal.
He has already scored three in his two Carabao Cup starts this season but this should be the first of many for a young talent who is showing Arteta he is able to contribute whenever called upon.
How much better does Odegaard make Arsenal?
After missing 12 games with an ankle ligament injury, it would usually be safe to presume that a returning player may need a few matches to find their sharpness and regain their rhythm.
Martin Odegaard scoffs at such lowly expectations.
The Arsenal captain followed up his comeback start against Chelsea in their final fixture before this month’s international break — where he gave a full 90-minute performance and contributed a clever assist — by being head and shoulders above every other place on the pitch today against Forest.
“Martin brings everybody together, he has this capacity with and without the ball,’ said Arteta this week. “He has this charisma, leadership, and that’s why he is the captain. He has the intelligence to make everybody better and make everybody click.”
It is not hyperbole to say Arsenal looked like a team transformed against Forest compared to the stale showings during the Norwegian’s absence from the middle of September.
Whether it was his chipped free-kick delivery in the fifth minute that led to a Leandro Trossard ‘goal’ disallowed for offside, the deft flick 10 minutes later to set up Saka for the opener, below, or the blind nutmeg on Nicolas Dominguez which sprung Arsenal from defence into attack, Odegaard was at the heart of pretty much everything.
He is the conductor of this team, and no part of it responds better to his presence than Saka.
The England winger has been a frustrated figure lately and has struggled to find space for himself but he gave Alex Moreno a torrid time and looked so much more willing to be direct, possibly because he was seeing the ball so regularly.
Odegaard solves so many of Saka’s problems in how he can draw opponents to him and combine in tight triangles around the box. The duo were constantly looking for each other, as the best players tend to do, and there was one moment in which Odegard was still able to find Saka even though he was falling over, facing his own goal and on his weak side.
Breaking down Saka’s dribble
Odegaard’s flick was a key part of Saka’s goal, but it’s worth looking at just how far the latter travelled with the ball before smashing in Arsenal’s opener against Forest.
Saka collects a high ball with his back to goal on the right side of the Forest box and turns away from the target towards the sideline to protect it.
The England forward then turns inside and plays the ball to Odegaard. He delivers his smart pass for Saka, who runs across him before collecting the ball again in the middle of the box.
Saka draws three defenders, jinks clear, then fires a shot back across goal into the opposite top corner.
Why was Jorginho replaced?
There was a surprise when the teams emerged for the second half and Jorginho was not present.
The Italian had helped bring a tranquillity to Arsenal’s play alongside Odegaard but had also been playing on a yellow card since the 24th minute, when he brought down Anthony Elanga to end a Forest break.
Arsenal have been forced to play three games a man down already this season due to red cards. The dismissals of Declan Rice and Trossard saw them pegged back to draw against Brighton and Manchester City, while William Saliba’s early sending-off at Bournemouth resulted in a convincing away defeat.
While the reason for Jorginho’s removal today is not yet known, Arteta may not have wished to risk a fourth red in just 12 league games and so made the proactive decision to substitute him. If that’s the case, it was decisive management and underlined how important a comfortable victory was for Arsenal here after a run of four league games without one.
It may not have been necessary had Arsenal converted their dominance into goals and given themselves a bigger cushion but controlling the controllables is all Arteta has been able to do during what has seemed like a never-ending carousel of injuries. Now he has nearly all his players back, this was a luxury he could afford to take by bringing on Partey.
It paid off as the Ghana midfielder whipped a sublime first-time shot past Matz Sels to kill the game off just seven minutes into the second half.
Is this Arsenal’s best full-back combination?
The dominant 2-0 win here against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League at the start of October felt like the moment Timber and summer signing Riccardo Calafiori had claimed their status as Arsenal’s first-choice full-back combination. But this was the first time Arteta has been able to deploy them together in those roles since.
That run of eight games was blighted by niggling injuries to various full-backs and meant Arsenal could never find the consistency of selection that had been key to their title challenges in the previous two seasons.
They have only been able to name the same full-back pairing in back-to-back league games three times over the opening 12 league games. Every single conventional full-back option has either had time out, as is the case with White, Timber, Calafiori and Oleksandr Zinchenko, or have been missing for the whole period, as with Takehiro Tomiyasu and Kieran Tierney.
This has been disruptive to Arsenal defensively, but also in an attacking sense. Trying to find a rhythm and fluency has been difficult, with Timber switching between left-back to right-back but against Forest, he and Calafiori looked assured and brought the perfect balance to the team. It is no surprise that Arsenal controlled opposition counter-attacks much more effectively.
Timber also linked intuitively with Odegaard and Saka down the right, replacing the combination play White has been part of for so long.
Both players inverted at times, too, which allowed Trossard and Saka to access the ball far more easily than Arsenal’s wingers have in recent times.
What did Mikel Arteta say?
We will bring you this after he has spoken at the post-match press conference.
What next for Arsenal?
Tuesday, November 26: Sporting CP (A), Champions League, 8pm UK, 3pm ET
Recommended reading
- Ben White out for ‘months’ with knee injury: What this means for Arsenal and Mikel Arteta
- Fixing Arsenal and Man City: The tactical tweaks that could keep their title hopes alive
- Martin Odegaard’s return: Rehab, subterfuge and what it means for Arsenal’s title challenge
- The search for Edu’s successor as Arsenal sporting director: Their criteria and the contenders
(Top photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
