Martin Keown reveals that he almost wanted to go and meet Mikel Arteta to ask him to sub in an Arsenal striker
Arsenal’s loss to Olympiacos would have had some more drama if Martin Keown had his way and approached Mikel Arteta to demand that he makes a striker substitution.
Keown watched in agony as Arsenal failed to capitalise on their first-leg advantage and fell to a home loss to the impressive Greeks.
He found it bemusing that Arteta kept Gabriel Martinelli on the bench until the second half of extra time and he claims that he almost ran to tell Arteta to put on the Brazilian.
Martinelli has scored ten goals for Arsenal this season and the Brazilian remains one of the team’s most reliable goal scorers.
However, Arteta has been rotating his team heavily recently and Martinelli has been one of the players who have struggled to get game time and Keown believes that Arteta should have brought him on earlier.
He said as quoted by the Sun: “We were that close I was tempted to tell Arteta to bring Martinelli on, but you don’t want to be disrespectful.
“It was obvious Martinelli had to come on, we were that close to Arteta I was tempted to go over and say ‘put Martinelli on’. You have to show respect, of course you can’t go and do that.
“The basics and the structure aren’t there. These are schoolboy errors.”
