As injury-hit title hopefuls Arsenal toiled to find the breakthrough in the second half against relegation candidates Leicester City on Saturday, eyes turned to their bench. All manager Mikel Arteta had in stock was a single attacker in the form of 22-year-old academy graduate Nathan Butler-Oyedeji — who only made his first-team debut for the club last month — a goalkeeper, two methodical midfielders and five full-backs.
There was no conventional way to insert the centre-forward Arsenal had been so painfully lacking in the first 69 minutes of the match.
If Arteta wanted to fill the Kai Havertz-shaped hole up top with something more similar to the absent original than the Leandro Trossard false-nine experiment he’d started the game with, he was going to have to conjure one out of thin air — or pick someone from the bench and convince him he’s Pele.
And the latter appears to be exactly what he did, morphing his fellow Basque Country-native Mikel Merino from a midfield duel-winning monster into a penalty-box poacher who came on and promptly scored a late double to keep Arsenal’s championship dreams alive.
Merino dedicated his brace to his wife as a consolation for forgetting to buy her a Valentine’s Day present, but his decisive cameo may just have gifted Arteta with a…
