Mikel Arteta stressed that Ebere Eze has played \u201cmore minutes than ever\u201d at this point of a season when asked about the midfielder\u2019s lack of game time of late. <\/p>\n
Eze has been an unused substitute for the last two league games but has played 22 times in all competitions for the Gunners this season.<\/p>\n
Asked whether he has spoken to the former Crystal Palace man about his game time, Arteta said: \u201cI speak to every player and the players always need to understand and the manager needs to understand how each one is feeling, assess games, assess their emotional state.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEbere has played more games, more minutes than ever at this time, he\u2019s played 22, I think, out of 28 games or something like this, so he\u2019s never played that much football,\u00a0so we\u2019re on a good track.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Arteta praised Eze, as well as team-mate Noni Madueke, for their readiness to be involved despite not starting games of late.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0think what they need to do is be prepared like they have been and when they have the opportunity\u00a0to play, perform like any other player, there\u2019s no difference,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere have been periods that they have played every three days, sometimes they play too much. <\/p>\n
\u201cNoni has been injured for a while and we have to manage and monitor obviously his load\u00a0and our depth.\u00a0It\u2019s the first few months, we have some great moments with him, we have some other moments\u00a0that there are things that we need to improve and we are on that journey.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good thing is they want it so badly.\u00a0I mean, the way they come in every single day and how much they want to give to the team\u00a0and impact the games, it\u2019s great to witness.\u00a0And that\u2019s the mentality I need to maintain.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ethan Nwaneri, meanwhile, has found opportunities tougher to come by, having played just 446 minutes of action for the Gunners this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of the journey for any player at this level, that\u2019s it,\u201d Arteta said on Nwaneri\u2019s lack of opportunity in the first team.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo before, he was the youngest player ever to play in this football club\u00a0and now he\u2019s going through that patch. Face it, challenge it and go for it, that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mikel Arteta stressed that Ebere Eze has played \u201cmore minutes than ever\u201d at this point of a season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":349813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-349812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=349812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/349813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=349812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=349812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=349812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}