Ethan Nwaneri’s future is going to be one of the more intriguing conversations among Arsenal fans this summer. Still only 19 years old, strangely, he feels a little like old news somehow given the emergence of Max Dowman this season and the late season surge enjoyed by Myles Lewis Skelly.
It is interesting- maybe even a little frustrating- that Arsenal have recently produced Bukayo Saka, Myles Lewis Skelly, Ethan Nwaneri and Max Dowman from Hale End and they are all left-footed. It is easy to forget what Nwaneri produced for the first team as a 17-year-old in 2024-25. He scored nine goals and provided two assists.
Even if we omit cup goals from that total four goals and two assists in 895 Premier League minutes (a goal contribution every 149 minutes) is not too shabby at all. You would be hard pressed to find many 17-year-olds with comparable numbers in top-flight history. Arsenal are a low scoring Premier League champion and it feels hasty to turn our noses up at someone with this sort of end-product potential.
However, the signings of Noni Madueke and Eberechi Eze last summer have blocked his pathway to first team minutes and I think we can take as read that interest in Aston Villa’s Morgan Rogers is genuine. It doesn’t really look as though Arsenal are keeping a spot open for Nwaneri, who spent the second half of the season on loan at Marseilles.
Nwaneri’s loan spell at Marseilles was severely damaged by the departure of Roberto de Zerbi shortly after he joined, which restricted his opportunities. Tough loan spells can still be useful in terms of development, of course. Hector Bellerin returned early from a loan spell at Watford in 2013-14 after some underwhelming performances at left wing-back before he dropped out of the team.
Serge Gnabry’s curious loan spell under Tony Pulis at West Brom didn’t harm his potential in the long-term and overcoming the challenges he faced there might even have helped to stiffen his resolve. Playing at one of the most chaotic clubs in Europe, away from home and in volatile circumstances could serve Ethan well in the long-term.
However, the long-term might include a future away from Arsenal at this point and the Gunners might not benefit from any character building that occurred in France. Given Marseilles were financially incentivised by Arsenal to give him minutes, I think the intention was that this loan was supposed to serve him on the pitch primarily and it simply did not.
Long-term, you probably have to ask the question as to whether the Arsenal town is big enough for Saka, Dowman and Nwaneri to flourish simultaneously- even if you remove the transfers of Eze and Madueke and the interest in Rogers. Given the level of Dowman’s talent, there is probably going to have to be a world where Saka and Dowman can coagulate.
Adding Nwaneri into that equation seems complicated. The realities of modern football financing have made selling players- especially academy trained players- more important than ever. We are going to have to get comfortable with selling players and if you want to extract good fees, you have to sell at a slightly uncomfortable point. Selling unwanted goods yields a much lower price- as we have seen many times before.
Manchester City sold Cole Palmer to Chelsea when they probably would have preferred to keep him but they likely realised that Foden and Palmer were too similar to co-operate. It isn’t just academy products where these calculations have to be made. Chelsea sold Kevin de Bruyne in the summer of 2014. In hindsight, a foolish choice but they still won the league title in 2014-15.
They also sold Mo Salah in the summer of 2016. Again, an error in hindsight but they still won the league in 2016-17. Losing good players is all part of having an elite squad- it is harder for young players to make an impression. However, I think it is worth asking whether some of the transfers that have blocked Nwaneri’s path have really been worthwhile.
Noni Madueke is currently making a decent club and international career by taking the heat off Bukayo Saka’s achilles. Could Nwaneri have played that role just as effectively? Maybe, but I do think there is something about Madueke’s attributes that make him an attractive option.
Back in September, England boss Thomas Tuchel put it very simply when asked about his admiration for the player, ‘He’s fast, he’s direct and he likes to dribble. That’s what we want from him.’ Madueke is so different from Nwaneri that I think you could make an argument for the addition of the former Chelsea man to Arsenal’s wide options. Managers seem to value what Madueke brings.
The bigger question is Eberechi Eze. At this risk of deploying crude logic, if we remove his contributions in North London derbies last season we are left with two goals and two assists in the Premier League and a goal and an assist in the Champions League. Scoring five goals against Spurs buys you supporter affection for very understandable reasons.
But in a colder, more analytical sense I think it is fair to ask whether Eze has really offered greater end product than Nwaneri might have managed with the same minutes from a central position. I think the pressure to win the league this season drove a relatively short-term decision to buy Eze and listen, Arsenal won the league and nobody can pretend they would have been satisfied with any other outcome.
Longer term, I still think it is totally fair to question whether blocking Nwaneri’s pathway with Eze will prove to be the right decision. Time will tell on that one, as it always does. And recent history is also littered with us writing off academy players who are suddenly able to forge a path.
Hector Bellerin, Francis Coquelin and Alex Iwobi all came into the team pretty suddenly. There again, they came into Arsenal teams far worse than this one. Eight weeks ago I might have been writing an obituary for Myles Lewis Skelly’s Arsenal career but now I think he might have saved the club some money on a more established central midfield player this summer.
The picture can change quickly. If Nwaneri is not sold before pre-season, he will have chances to impress with Merino, Eze, Odegaard, Saka and Madueke all on international duty. Jack Wilshere pushed his way into the Arsenal starting line-up with an excellent pre-season in the summer of 2010 with Fabregas, Nasri, Song and Diaby all away at the World Cup in South Africa.
If a strong offer comes in for the player this summer, Arsenal are either going to have to strongly consider it, or else call off interest in Rogers and / or make a surprise sale to accommodate him. It doesn’t feel or look like the club would be able to have their cake and eat it in that scenario. If Nwaneri is sold this summer, it is quite likely we will go on to rue the loss of a huge talent but that doesn’t necessarily mean it would be the totally wrong choice either.
