The 17-year-old has made a significant breakthrough this season and capped another impressive cameo on Saturday with his first ever Premier League goal in a 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest.
Excitement and hype surrounding the Hale End Acadmey graduate is reaching fever pitch but Arteta continues to plead for patience and insists Nwaneri’s development must not be rushed.
Speaking after Saturday’s game, the Arsenal manager said: ‘What I like is that he comes in, in that context, the first thing he does is take a touch, run forward, run past two players and put it inches away from the post.
‘I understand that, I am responsible for him, and you have to do that brick by brick. Today he put in another brick, now we have to put the cement, make sure that it doesn’t get dry, so that he can put in another one and another one and that one is going to stick.
‘Then we put one more layer, we want to put five in a row. Believe me, it won’t work and we have to manage that with his expectations and his load as well, which is really important.
‘I am always tempted (to start him more regularly’. I think he’s the second-youngest player for the club to score in the Premier League. It’s giving us all the reason and today is another reason to put him there but that’s when I play him and not somebody else. It’s step-by-step, I would say.
‘Something I cannot do myself, I cannot manage expectations. I will try to educate him, raise him, and give him the pathway that we believe is the best.
‘His family, his agent, his friends, they will be very important as well. Don’t listen too much to the noise, focus on what he does which is to play football and he loves every minute of it and good things will happen to him for sure.’
While Arteta’s approach would appear an eminently sensible one, the clamour for Nwaneri to feature more regularly is unlikely to dissipate any time soon.
Indeed, Walcott, who knows a thing or two about dealing with the pressures that accompany being hyped at such a young age, feels Nwaneri should have been given more responsibility during Martin Odegaard’s injury enforced absence.
The club captain missed 12 games with an ankle injury that he has only just recovered from, but Nwaneri’s only starts so far have come in the Carabao Cup.
Walcott told Sky Sports: He’s had a lot more experience playing at the highest level [than I did], he’s been around these players consistently that’s why I just wanted to see a little bit more of him when Odegaard was out. He’s different and Arsenal needed something different to get them through that patch without Odegaard.
‘Odegaard is a magician and he’s not far off of it.’
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