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Gabriel Martinelli can solve striker issue and save Arsenal £50m
Arsenal have a striker issue that they need to solve this summer, but they already have the answer within their squad and his name is Gabriel Martinelli.
After letting Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang leave in January to Barcelona, the club were left with two senior strikers in their squad. Alexandre Lacazette has made the striker position his own, while Eddie Nketiah has played the role of understudy.
Both of those players are set for summer exits as it stands though, with their contracts due to expire at the end of the season and no new deal in place yet.
That would normally see the club enter the transfer market, with reports of £50m+ targets such as Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Alexander Isak and Darwin Nunez mentioned in the press.
But instead of spending that kind of money on one player to go into the role, Mikel Arteta has the opportunity to put faith in his young players and simply shift Martinelli into his favoured striker role full-time and allow Emile Smith Rowe to move into the starting line-up.
Now obviously they will still need a striker to come in, because you can’t rely on a 19-year-old to carry your front line for the whole season. But it means a large chunk of the money can be spent improving other areas of the squad.
Martinelli recently received a call up to the Brazil national team and didn’t look out of place at all. Training videos showed his ability in front of goal and we’ve seen for Arsenal that he knows exactly how to find the back of the net having scored at a regular rate in the past.
Arteta has trusted his young attack for most of this season, so why not continue that? If the long term vision of the player is to play as a striker, there seems like no better time than now to give him the opportunity to develop and prove that he deserves it.
Experience and competition is always a good thing, but sometimes the answer to your problems is already right under your nose.
In other Arsenal news, Arsenal set to miss out on Brazilian defender Vinicius Tobias as Real Madrid swoop