Arsenal’s headline summer arrivals Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze have struggled for consistent minutes in recent weeks.
Eze has failed to feature at all across the last three matches, while Madueke has started just five Premier League fixtures this season.
When questioned on the situation, Mikel Arteta attempted to ease any concern, insisting the pair will earn chances if they show it on the training ground.
“I speak to every player,” Arteta said.
“The players always need to understand and the manager needs to understand how each one is feeling. Assess games, assess the emotional state.
“Ebs has played more games, more minutes than ever at this time. He’s played I think 22 out of 28 games or something like this. He’s never played that much football so we’re on a good track.
What they need to do is be prepared like they’ve been and when they have the opportunity to play, perform like any other player. This is no different.
“There have been periods where they have played every three days, sometimes they played too much.
Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta has thrown down a challenge to Eberechi Eze after leaving him out of his starting line-up. The playmaker arrived at the Emirates from Crystal Palace for an initial £60 million ($81.2m) fee in August and, despite impressing during the early part of the campaign, the 27-year-old has seen his involvement reduced in recent weeks. Arteta has now suggested Eze must “improve” certain aspects of his game.
When Eze completed his move to Arsenal last summer, Arteta was full of praise for the former Palace star. The Spaniard described Eze’s ability as “unquestionable” and said he possessed the quality to deliver “magic moments”. After his hat-trick against Tottenham in November, the 43-year-old labelled the display as “unbelievable”.
He told reporters: “I look at the stats and when was the last time that somebody scored a hat-trick in a north London derby? Many, many, many years ago. So that tells you about the difficulty, but it’s not a coincidence. After international duty, he had two days off, and he said, ‘no, I want to train the next day, I want to practice.’ He was asking me questions about his positioning, about his pacing, about this. When a player has that talent, has a brain, and he has that willingness to be better and to make an impact in the team, these things happen.”
Fast forward to the present, though, and Eze has not clocked a single minute in Arsenal’s last three Premier League outings, with Leandro Trossard and Martin Odegaard favoured in advanced roles. So, what has changed?