'There are things we need to improve' - Mikel Arteta lays gauntlet down to Eberechi Eze as Arsenal boss explains £60m man's recent lack of game time

When Eze signed for Arsenal last summer, Arteta had nothing but praise for the former Palace ace. The Spaniard said Eze's talent was "unquestionable" and he had it in him to produce "magic moments". And after his hat-trick against Tottenham in November, the 43-year-old described his performance as "unbelievable". 

He told reporters: "I look at the stats and when was the last time that somebody scored a hat-trick in a north London derby? Many, many, many years ago. So that tells you about the difficulty, but it's not a coincidence. After international duty, he had two days off, and he said, 'no, I want to train the next day, I want to practice.' He was asking me questions about his positioning, about his pacing, about this. When a player has that talent, has a brain, and he has that willingness to be better and to make an impact in the team, these things happen."

Fast-forward to the present, however, and Eze has not played a single minute in any of Arsenal's last three Premier League games, with Leandro Trossard and Martin Odegaard preferred in attack. So, what's changed?

Prior to his recent time away from the pitch, Eze was chalking up regular game time for Arsenal. Indeed, of his 22 appearances for the club, 17 have been as a starter. Now, it seems, Arteta is managing Eze's minutes.

"I speak to every player," Arteta said. "The players always need to understand and the manager needs to understand how each one is feeling. Assess games, assess the emotional state. Ebs has played more games, more minutes than ever at this time. He's played I think 22 out of 28 games or something like this. He's never played that much football so we're on a good track."

While Eze may have some concerns about not featuring a great deal in recent weeks, Arsenal team-mate and fellow summer signing Noni Madueke has played even less. The £50m ($67m) recruit has racked up just 13 appearances this term, with Trossard and Bukayo Saka often preferred to the former Chelsea winger. 

Incidentally, when it was suggested that Eze and Madueke had concerns that their lack of minutes could jeopardise their chances of making it into England's World Cup squad, Arteta pushed back at that narrative. He also suggested that the duo can "improve" in their bid to get more first-team action.

"From who? What they need to do is be prepared like they've been and when they have the opportunity to play, perform like any other player," he said. "This is no different. There have been periods where they have played every three days, sometimes they played too much. Noni as well has been injured for a while and we have to manage and monitor his load. With Ebs, the first few months we've had some great moments with him, we had some others moments where there are things we need to improve. We are on that journey. The good thing is they want it so badly. The way they come in every single day and how much they want to give to the team and impact the games is great to witness. That's the mentality they need to maintain."

Eze, who has bagged five goals and four assists for Arsenal this season, will hope to get some game time when Arteta's table-topping side travel to struggling Bournemouth on Saturday evening. With a busy fixture period ahead, it seems likely that he will get more minutes soon.