Nwaneri to Marseille: Arsenal's First Big Squad Domino Falls

Arsenal went big on depth and that's complicated the youth development, De Zerbi's Marseille offers a potentially great opportunity for growth, and what It means for the teenager's Arsenal future

It looks like the first domino has fallen on how Arsenal will be dealing with their very large squad for the second half of the season. With Arsenal’s injury crisis (knock on wood) easing, the openings for players to get on to the bench, let alone to get on the field, have gotten tougher and tougher, leaving senior pros not even making match day squads.

In a fast-moving transaction (from the outside) that went from first publicly reported interest to done deal in just a few hours, we have Ethan Nwaneri moving on loan to Olympique Marseille until the end of the season. Here is David Ornstein with some more details:

The deal [with Marseille] includes a significant loan fee that depends on appearances but will reduce the more he plays. There is no option to make the move permanent at the end of the season.

The move has been driven by Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta’s desire for the 18-year-old to play under Marseille head coach Roberto De Zerbi.

Let’s break it down.

Crowded Pathway at Arsenal

This season has probably not gone exactly to plan for Nwaneri, he has made 4 starts in all competitions (0 in the Premier League) and has played just 5.8 nineties over 12 total appearances. This is coming off of a season where he made 16 starts (11 in the Premier League) and played over 15 nineties.

In the limited opportunities (against mixed opposition quality) he has looked quite good, especially for his age but he has not done quite enough to make it impossible to pick others above him.

The path to playing time at Arsenal in the second half of this season didn’t really present a lot of obvious opportunities as the leverage of the remaining matches only continues to ratchet up.

Unfortunately, prioritizing Nwaneri’s development minutes has been one of the casualties of Arsenal pushing very hard to win the biggest honors this season.

Last season he got the majority of his minutes playing wide right after Bukayo Saka was injured. He did quite well there but it doesn’t appear that he, nor the club, wanted to continue down the wide attacker path, viewing his future playing in a more central role.

In the summer, Arsenal brought in Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze to add to Mikel Arteta’s arsenal (pun intended), directly competing with Nwaneri’s preferred positions as an attacking midfielder or winger.

Selfishly and perhaps with some PTSD of seeing Arsenal depleted by injury, I would not have minded keeping him around. He has a potential to score goals from very little that is hard to replicate in the squad but realistically this is for the best.

A Perfect Ligue 1 Landing Spot?

Ligue 1 has long been a breeding ground for young talents, churning out Premier League-ready players like clockwork. This is especially true of midfielders where there seems to be the right combination of tactics, trust in youth, and level of competition that nurtures prospects into full time players.

Nwaneri’s move to Marseille positions him in a competitive environment (Ligue 1 is rightly a top 5 League, even if it is 5th) where he can hopefully find more opportunities away from the suffocating pressure of Arsenal’s chase for silverware.

I am not a close watcher of Ligue 1 (they are not on a television channel/streaming service that I get at all), so I am not going to pretend to be one here, but here is a bit on what the data shows on Marseille.

Under Roberto De Zerbi (who we all should be a bit more familiar with given the Premier League ties), Marseille have adopted a style that is not too dissimilar to Arsenal.

De Zerbi is a key to this deal according to Ornstein, with Arteta working with him on it and becoming the driving force for moving to France versus some of the other options within the Premier League that were also available.

De Zerbi, shares a stylistic DNA with Arteta, building his team to play possession-based, high-pressing football that emphasizes technical midfielders like Nwaneri. He does favor more of a 4-2-3-1 or 3-4-2-1 than the 4-3-3 that Arteta uses but that should still present an opportunity to play in an attacking midfield role.

What This Means for Nwaneri’s Arsenal Future

With no buy option or obligation, this is clearly not goodbye for Nwaneri at Arsenal. Hopefully this is more of a strategic interlude where he can develop more and come back prepared to compete again for the spot at Arsenal.

This doesn’t drastically change my view of his odds at making it at Arsenal, and I don’t think that it changes the opinion that Arsenal still see him as one of the brightest talents in their ranks. The reality is that with the level that Arsenal are at right now, it is not easy for any player to push their way into a title winning side, let alone a teenager.

The signing of Eze this summer always made a move like this seem more likely, I think that there is a good chance that something like this could repeat again next season with both players in the creative attacking midfield spot in the heart of their prime.

This underscores the challenges of youth development in a title-contending side, the stakes are high and with the size of squad required to play the number of matches at the intensity that Arsenal want under Arteta, minutes are a tough commodity. Arsenal have an example in their squad of how this can work out, with Saliba developing in France before stepping into his current role, perhaps Nwaneri’s path can mirror this.

This is a big chance for Nwaneri and hopefully he can seize the opportunity, plus I love to have an excuse to pay more attention to League outside of England.

What do you think, readers? Is this the right call for Nwaneri, or should he have stayed to fight for minutes?