Arsenal have been the surprise package of the season so far – and the biggest surprise of all was Ethan Nwaneri's debut at 15 years old.
But don't fall for any loose talk about Mikel Arteta giving such a young kid a taste of first-team action at Brentford as an ego trip. If you turn a 15-year-old boy's career into a vanity project, just for the sake of the record books, you are potentially damaging his future and setting him back years.
I thought Nwaneri did fine, and put himself about well during his cameo in added time, with Arsenal fans chanting: “He's got school in the morning.” But social media 'experts' and pundits who speculate that Arteta's eye-catching substitution was an ego trip are playing with fire.
