Mikel Arteta hailed Ethan Nwaneri for starring against Brentford and dismissed suggestions that a sickness bug in the Arsenal camp led to the 17-year-old making his first Premier League start.
Nwaneri was picked to start a Premier League game for the first time in his career on New Year’s Day as Arsenal travelled to the Gtech Community Stadium.
The teenager was picked to play on the right flank in the same stadium where he became the youngest player in Premier League history two years ago.
Nwaneri put in an impressive performance and was involved in both of Arsenal’s second-half goals as they ran out 3-1 winners.
“Well, in that position it wasn’t because of the bug, it was a decision that I made because I thought he was the best player to play in the position to start the game and because there was a story there with his debut here,” said Arteta.
“He made his Premier League debut [here] and sometimes that feeling comes in and you feel it is the right one and then who knows.
“Part of that development is patience, managing frustration, managing expectation because you expect that everything is going to go so fast as the previous things happen and it’s not the case.
“So now we’re building him, he’s already played a lot of games, a lot of minutes for us for the age that he’s got – and he fully deserves that.”
Arsenal had to fight back from a goal down for their win at Brentford, which moved them up to second in the Premier League.
Bryan Mbeumo put the Bees ahead inside the first 15 minutes – and Arteta praised his side’s character as they came back to win.
“We went a goal down and it became a big mountain to climb,” he said.
“I think the team showed a lot of composure, was very calm emotionally because we needed that in today’s game and as well had the right desire to keep persisting, attacking them in the way that can cause them problems which is difficult. So overall I think we deserved to win the game.”