“He’d be on the sidelines”- Arteta must ruthlessly bench “lazy” £45k per-week Arsenal ace against Liverpool on Sunday.
Arsenal have a tough test ahead of them in the Premier League this weekend as they welcome Liverpool to the Emirates Stadium on Sunday.
After comfortably beating their north London rivals Tottenham Hotspur last weekend, the Gunners turned their attention to the Europa League in midweek by beating Bodo/Glimt 3-0.
Now back on Premier League duty, Mikel Arteta’s side will be hoping to keep their place at the top of the table and pick up all three points against the Merseyside club.
In terms of the starting XI for Sunday’s showdown, one man who featured in midweek but who we feel should be taken out of the team for this game is Eddie Nketiah.
Despite scoring Arsenal’s first goal on Thursday night, in our view his overall performance wasn’t enough to warrant the £45k-per-week attacker a place in the team against Liverpool.
In addition to having three shots off target and missing two big chances against the Norwegian club, the striker only completed 12 of the 19 passes that he attempted, giving him the joint-worst success rate of any Arsenal player with just 63%.
Having had fewer touches of the ball than goalkeeper Matt Turner and lost nine of his 12 duels, this shows that he didn’t have what it takes to dominate the game and is therefore unlikely to do it against Jurgen Klopp’s side.
In fact, this performance on Thursday makes us feel that Nketiah could be exposed against Liverpool in terms of not being able to make an impact on proceedings.
With the centre-forward being slammed by Martin Keown for the “lazy” challenge that he made against FC Zurich which gave away a penalty in the Gunners’ 2-1 win in Switzerland last month, this suggests that the 23-year-old can also be a bit of a liability in his own box, along with being wasteful at the other end of the pitch.
Taking all this into account, we feel that the Englishman will have to wait a bit longer to get his first league start of the season.
