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Arsenal winger Gabriel Martinelli does not deserve to be pushed to the margins - and he remains good enough to make a meaningful contribution in North London for at least another season.

Think of it this way: if Arsenal were offered a left winger who scored more Champions League goals last season than Bradley Barcola, Vinicius Jr or Leandro Trossard, they would surely take notice. A left winger with a proven willingness to do the hard yards without the ball and effectively fill in with wing-back-type defensive shifts. A left winger who has a habit of producing big goals in big moments, having scored against Real Madrid and Manchester City over the past couple of years. A left winger who has never created a fuss about starting ahead of others and has simply waited patiently for his chances. A left winger who is still only 25. A left winger who genuinely loves Arsenal.

You can see where this is heading. The headline already gave it away: this is about Gabriel Martinelli. But even if it had not, who else currently available actually ticks most of those boxes?

If Arsenal had a nailed-on upgrade ready to take over the No.11 shirt, then perhaps the current cold-shoulder treatment would make some sense. But apparently they do not. Even club icon Ian Wright has admitted he cannot understand why the Gunners are leaving Martinelli out of squads at the moment, as he said on Sky Sports last Friday.

“It really makes me feel uncomfortable,” Wrighty said. “He's done enough with this squad to be treated with a little bit more respect than he's being treated with at the moment.” “Done enough” may actually understate it. Martinelli went through the difficult years alongside Bukayo Saka. He is one of only three players left in Mikel Arteta's squad whom the manager neither signed nor handed a debut to, arriving as a bargain signing from the fourth tier in Brazil when Arsenal were at a low ebb and then becoming part of what defined this new era. He brought pace, excitement and goals against major opponents, but beyond that he was unselfish, industrious and desperate to prove himself. The treatment feels especially harsh when you consider how much Arsenal owe their Premier League title push to him - and not only because he rescued them a point against Manchester City last season. Would Arsenal one day do this to Saka or Declan Rice? And beyond that, it is simply puzzling. He can still offer plenty - arguably more than some of his team-mates.

It feels as though Martinelli's own team-first attitude has contributed to his stagnation. He truly announced himself in 2022/23, delivering 15 league goals and combining superbly with Gabriel Jesus and Granit Xhaka down the left. He produced six goal contributions in his first 10 matches, earned a call-up for the mid-season World Cup, and then posted another 12 in his final 12 games. At that stage, it felt as if his ceiling was every bit as high as Saka's.

Then Jesus suffered the first in a run of serious injuries. Xhaka moved on and, instead of replacing him with another passer, Arteta opted for a runner in the left-sided No.8 role, first using Kai Havertz and then Declan Rice. That left Martinelli pinned to the touchline. He never really developed that diagonal movement inside towards the box; instead, he seemed to focus on staying wide, staying out of Rice's zones and trying to beat defenders on the outside. He probably should have been a bit more selfish. Before Arteta, he had been a centre-forward and had a remarkable knack for attacking any ball in the air. Yet since 2023, the Brazilian has largely kept his head down - both literally and figuratively - and carried out the role of a touchline winger despite not really possessing that explosive 1v1 edge.

He has rarely been given a genuine chance to play more centrally - and yet whenever he has featured there, he has impressed. The last time he led the line was against Liverpool in 2024/25, and he scored in a brilliant second-half display. He has also not been blessed with much room to counter-attack into because so many teams sit deep against Arsenal. Yet last season, when he was given a bit of space to breathe, he scored in six of his seven Champions League group games.

It feels as if Martinelli is being judged against what people once expected him to become.

More often than not, Martinelli produces when the conditions suit him. And now Arsenal suddenly have more passing quality on the left side through Myles Lewis-Skelly or Bruno Guimaraes, as well as a dependable overlapping option at left-back in Piero Hincapie. In other words, Arsenal have finally assembled a team structure that could suit Martinelli better... and this is the moment they are looking to sell him. It does feel as though the Brazilian is being measured against the version of him people imagined. Jurgen Klopp once called Martinelli a “talent of the century” - which now feels a touch exaggerated. But in all honesty, did Noni Madueke really have a better season than him last year?

There are wider concerns here too. Viktor Gyokeres does not offer a complete all-round game, and the gap between Kai Havertz and the Swede is the biggest between any two players competing for a role in this squad. Arsenal do have several players who can operate on the left. But unless they can secure a clear and major upgrade on Martinelli - and right now it does not look like they can - the sensible move would surely be to keep him for another six months as cover for Eberechi Eze and Christos Tzolis on the left, while also using him as an alternative to Havertz and Gyokeres through the middle. Then wait another six to 12 months for a true game-changing option - perhaps a Junior Kroupi or a Kenan Yildiz - to emerge. And is it really even a financial setback when the club may well spend nine figures on a player within the next 18 months anyway?

But that is not the fashionable call. Martinelli has now been at the club for seven years and, unlike Saka, he has not developed into the world-class attacker many expected him to become. This may be Arsenal's final opportunity to bring in a substantial transfer fee for a player with only two years left on his contract. And because he has not really kicked on over the last three years, it becomes easier to sell him now and ask “what if” than to sit through another underwhelming campaign.

Football increasingly seems to deal in absolutes. Only last night, Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher criticised his former club's transfer business from 12 months ago as potentially the “worst transfer window in Premier League history”. It may not even have been the worst window of last summer - and if signing Hugo Ekitike and Alexander Isak is supposedly that disastrous, Arsenal would probably be delighted to have problems of that kind. In the same way, Martinelli is not some hopeless, unusable attacker, and Julian Alvarez is not a flawless miracle solution who automatically replaces him. If Arsenal decide to spend £100 million on a player with only a small number of senior appearances on the left wing, that is a gamble. If they choose to put that sort of money into a footballer who so clearly does not want to move there, that feels closer to a lottery ticket.

The plan to freeze Martinelli out while chasing Alvarez does not seem especially consistent with Arsenal's usually cautious approach to signing attackers - an approach shaped not only by their need to improve, but also by failed attempts to land Morgan Rogers and Vinicius Jr. Perhaps those criticising the devil they know should be careful what they wish for. Replacing Martinelli sounds sensible in theory, but in practice it may be nowhere near as simple once reality bites.