Mikel Arteta has admitted he perhaps should have played Myles Lewis-Skelly in midfield sooner, adding that the teenager more than earned Saturday’s opportunity.
Myles Lewis-Skelly started in midfield for Arsenal against Fulham on Saturday, playing a very positive role in what turned out to be a 3-0 win for the team.
Lewis-Skelly has almost exclusively played as a left-back during his senior career for Arsenal so far, but he was almost always a midfielder during his youth career.
This was a chance to prove he offers something in the middle in the senior game, and it’s a chance the player grasped with both hands.
Speaking afterwards, Mikel Arteta admitted Lewis-Skelly has worked hard to get this opportunity.
“He fully deserves it,” Arteta said. “I’ve been tough on him. He had a spectacular season last year when he jumped into the first team.
“He had some difficult moments after that, but he stayed very humble, very focused, very aligned with what we wanted to do, and I knew he was ready.
“He’s been showing in training every day the opportunities that he had to play. He’s done it and today he really stepped up and I thought he had an incredible performance.”
As for why Arteta didn’t start Lewis-Skelly in midfield sooner, the Arsenal manager suggested he probably should have.
“Because probably I don’t have a clue and maybe I should have done it earlier, I don’t know!” Arteta answered. “But I have to do things when I believe that the player is ready, the team is ready and the opponent is the right one to play with him in that position.
“We’ve done it today, it’s the first time. It was a big risk because I knew what was going to happen, if he wasn’t this great, we would have lost the game. ‘How do you play a kid at this age, in this scenario, in a position that he hasn’t played all season?’
“I knew that but I had the feeling that it was the right game for him.”
In Arteta’s defence, Saturday wasn’t actually the first time he’d tried to start Lewis-Skelly in midfield.
Back in February, he selected Lewis-Skelly in midfield with Riccardo Calafiori at left-back for the FA Cup game against Wigan Athletic, only for Calafiori to have to pull out with an injury and Lewis-Skelly to take his place in the defence.
If things had gone differently that day, perhaps we would have seen the Arsenal academy graduate in midfield on a more regular basis in recent months. But that’s not how it turned out, and Arteta opted not to take the risk again until this weekend.
Lewis-Skelly’s future remains somewhat uncertain, with Sam Dean reporting for The Telegraph that there are “serious doubts” over him staying, particularly given the financial incentive to sell a player who represents “pure profit” in accounting terms.
But if the young midfielder plays like he did on Saturday, it’s hard to justify letting him go, regardless of the money it might bring in.
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