Imagine you were to offer Arsenal a left-winger who scored more goals in the Champions League last season than Bradley Barcola, Vinicius Jr or Leandro Trossard. A left-winger with a proven work ethic to do the dirty work defensively and essentially run wing-back shifts. A left-winger with a knack for huge goals in huge moments, who scored against Real Madrid and Manchester City in the last couple of years. A left-winger who has never agitated to start ahead of anyone else and simply bided their time for opportunities. A left-winger who is still just 25 years old. A left-winger who adores Arsenal.
You get where this is going. You read the headline: you know that we're talking about Gabriel Martinelli. But just in case we weren't: who else is available right now who ticks even most of those boxes?
If Arsenal had a guaranteed upgrade waiting for the no.11 shirt, you could maybe understand the freeze-out. But they apparently don't. Not even club legend Ian Wright understands why the Gunners are leaving Martinelli out of squads right now, as he said on Sky Sports last Friday.
“It really makes me feel uncomfortable,” Wrighty said. “He's done enough with this squad to be treated with a little bit more respect than he's being treated with at the moment.”
“Done enough” is putting it mildly. Martinelli was there in the trenches with Bukayo Saka: one of three players left in manager Mikel Arteta's squad whom he didn't actually sign or give a debut to, as a fourth-tier Brazilian bargain who came into an Arsenal side at its lowest and came to define this new era. He was pacy and exciting and scored goals against big teams, but more than that, he was selfless and hard-working and desperate to impress.
The treatment feels particularly cold, given how much Arsenal owe their Premier League title to this guy – and not just for salvaging them a point against Manchester City last season. Is this what Arsenal will do to Saka or Declan Rice one day?
But it's also baffling. He can still contribute – more so than some of his team-mates.
It feels as if Martinelli's own selflessness has led to his stagnation. He announced himself in 2022/23, contributing 15 league goals, dovetailing with Gabriel Jesus and Granit Xhaka on the left-hand side. He registered six goal contributions in his first 10 games, earned a call-up to the midseason World Cup, then registered another 12 in his last 12. It felt like his ceiling was as high as Saka's.
And then Jesus picked up the first of a series of serious injuries. Xhaka left – and rather than replacing him with another passing, Arteta brought in a runner for that left-hand no.8 position, using Kai Havertz, and then Declan Rice. Martinelli was limited to the touchline. He never developed that diagonal cut inside into the box; instead, he looked to stay wide – stay out of Rice's feet – and beat a man on the outside.
He should have been a little more ego-driven. He was a centre-forward before Arteta: he had a knack of getting his head to absolutely anything. Yet from 2023 onwards, the Brazilian has essentially kept his head down (literally and figuratively) to be a touchline winger, despite lacking the 1v1 burst.
He's never been given much of a sniff of playing further in-field – yet whenever he's played there, he's impressed. He last led the line against Liverpool in 2024/25 and scored, in a superb second-half performance. He's never had the space to counter-attack into, given how teams low-block Arsenal – yet last season he scored in six of his seven Champions League group games when he was given breathing space.
It feels like Martinelli is being judged against what was expected of him
Martinelli will usually deliver when given the conditions to – and suddenly, Arsenal have more of a passing presence on the left-hand side, in Myles Lewis-Skelly or Bruno Guimaraes, and a reliable overlap from left-back, in Piero Hincapie. Arsenal have finally built a team for Martinelli… and it's only now that they're selling him.
It sort of feels like the Brazilian is being judged against what was expected of him. Jurgen Klopp once labelled Martinelli as a “talent of the century” – which feels a little overblown now. But if we're being completely honest, did Noni Madueke have a better season than him last year?
There are bigger issues at play here. Viktor Gyokeres lacks an all-round game, and the drop-off between Kai Havertz and the Swede is the biggest between two players in the squad. Arsenal have several players who can play on the left-hand side: unless they can land a significant upgrade on Martinelli – which it doesn't seem they can – the sensible thing would surely be to keep him for another six months as backup to Eberechi Eze and Christos Tzolis on the left, and an alternative to Havertz and Gyokeres through the centre. Wait six to 12 months until a genuine level-raiser – a Junior Kroupi or a Kenan Yildiz, perhaps – appears. Is it even taking a financial hit when you're going to buy a nine-figure player in the next 18 months anyway?
But that's not the popular decision. Martinelli has been there seven years, and unlike Saka, he's not developed into the world-class forward everyone thought he would become. This is the last chance to recoup a big fee for a player with two years left on his contract – and given that he's not improved over the past three years, it's easier to move him on and wonder “what if” than to endure another below-average season.
It seems like things are more black-and-white in football than ever before. Only last night, Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher slammed his former club's business 12 months ago as potentially the “worst transfer window in Premier League history”. It may not have even been the worst last summer – and if signing Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak is truly that disastrous, surely Arsenal would love a taste of that.
Just as Martinelli is not a terrible, unusable forward, Julian Alvarez is not the magical silver bullet to replace him. If Arsenal choose to drop £100 million on a player with a handful of senior appearances on the left wing, that's a gamble: if they choose to invest quite so much money in a footballer who so plainly obviously doesn't want to go there, that feels more like a lottery.
The decision to freeze out Martinelli and pursue Alvarez doesn't feel massively in line with Arsenal's careful approach of signing attackers – driven as much by their failed pursuits of Morgan Rogers and Vinicius Jr as by their desperation to upgrade.
Maybe those who criticise the devil they know should be careful what they wish for. Upgrading on Martinelli seems like a good idea in theory, but it might not be quite as straightforward when reality hits.
