Arsenal travelled to Mansfield Town on Saturday with a stress-free approach.
In this long, arduous campaign for the Gunners, very few games have been played without much pressure on them, such is their desire to win all four competitions available to them.
However, if they were expecting an easy ride against the League One opposition in the FA Cup, they didn’t get it.
It took 41 minutes for the deadlock to be broken, Noni Madueke scoring a lovely fizzing effort from just inside the area.
Arsenal struggled for large parts of the game and were pegged back by second-half substitute Will Evans, but Eberechi Eze came up trumps to put Mikel Arteta’s men in the hat for the quarter-finals, their best venture to this stage of the competition since 2020.
Arsenal’s fringe players struggle to impress
Understandably, Arteta rang the changes on Saturday afternoon ahead of a big week in which they face Bayer Leverkusen in the Champions League.
However, with a whole host of players pushing for a place in the side in midweek, not many staked their claim.
In all honesty, it was not a surprise that the performance lacked fluidity. They began the game with a three-man defence and the flow of the performance was rather absent until Leandro Trossard went off with an injury.
That allowed Arsenal to move to a four-man backline and while things did get better, they lacked penetration and creativity.
That was largely due to the performance of Gabriel Martinelli on the left-hand side, who failed to make that spot on the left flank his own.
While Madueke on the right side popped up with a vital goal, Martinelli never really troubled a League One defence. He did claim the assist for the opener but all he had to do was play a simple four-yard pass to his right-hand side.
That aside, it was a poor performance from the Brazilian who won just two of his eight duels and completed only one of his two dribbles.
That said, it wasn’t just the attack that caused problems for Arsenal, with Cristhian Mosquera looking strangely shaky at the heart of the defence.
The Spaniard has been nothing short of exceptional since moving to the Emirates Stadium but found himself diving in on numerous occasions without coming out with the ball.
Following a timid performance against Brighton a few days ago, it was another struggle for the centre-back but he wasn’t helped by Marli Salmon.
The 16-year-old was making his first start for the Gunners after a series of sub appearances and while he looked tidy for the vast majority of his time on the pitch, the defender did sell Mosquera short with a pass in the build-up to Mansfield’s opener.
That said, they arguably were not the worst players on the pitch for Arsenal.
£45m Arsenal star looks like the new Raheem Sterling
It wasn’t all doom and gloom for Arsenal with Madueke and Eze finding the net. Max Dowman, too, was simply phenomenal on his first start after injury.
Another 16-year-old, the term generational has been thrown around and understandably so. He oozes class.
The same cannot be said for Gabriel Jesus, a player at the opposite end of his career to Dowman but somebody who is clearly in the last knockings of his time with the club.
While Arsenal’s stunning teenager relished the opportunity, Jesus certainly didn’t stake his claim with another lethargic-looking performance.
The Brazilian missed pretty much all of 2025 with an ACL injury and returned well at the back end of the calendar year, scoring twice against Inter Milan.
However, beyond netting against Wigan Athletic in the last round of the cup, his quality has looked non-existent in the final third in recent months. Indeed, this was another abject display from Arsenal’s number 9.
Like Martinelli, he never looked like scoring, registering three shots, only one of which was on target.
Arsenal player ratings vs Mansfield
Kepa Arrizabalaga – 6
Marli Salmon – 5
Cristhian Mosquera – 4
Riccardo Calafiori – 5
Christian Norgaard – 6
Leandro Trossard – 5
Kai Havertz – 6
Max Dowman – 9
Noni Madueke – 8
Gabriel Martinelli – 4
Gabriel Jesus – 3
The most worrying aspect of Jesus’ play is the lack of physicality and lack of explosiveness since his injury. There’s a case to be made that he’s something of this season’s Raheem Sterling.
Sterling signed on a season-long loan for Arsenal last season but looked way past his best, scoring just once during his time at the club and infamously missing a penalty against Girona in the Champions League.
Like Sterling, Jesus looks miles off the pace and he’s a shadow of the player they signed from Manchester City.
Against Mansfield, he had just 37 touches of the ball. To put that into context, goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga found himself more involved with 65 touches.
Furthermore, Jesus completed just 71% of his passes and won only one of his five ground duels. At the age of 28, it’s been a worrying regression in his quality.
What’s next? Well, it would be a surprise if we saw the Brazil international start again for Arsenal, given that Havertz and Gyokeres appear to be ahead of him in the pecking order.
As a result, expect to see the £45m signing sold in the summer, even before players like Trossard and Martinelli.
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