Ian Wright Defends Martinelli Amid Arsenal Transfer Controversy

Ian Wright has launched a fierce defence of Gabriel Martinelli, accusing Arsenal of mishandling the Brazilian’s potential exit just months after he helped deliver the Premier League title.

Martinelli, 25, played 53 games in all competitions last season, scored 11 goals and celebrated as a champion. Now he cannot even get in the squad.

Left out of the 3-0 league-opening win over Coventry on Friday. Missing again from the Community Shield victory against Manchester City. Available for transfer.

For Wright, it does not sit right.

“The way Martinelli is being treated at the moment, it really makes me feel uncomfortable,” the former Arsenal striker told Sky Sports. “I know they might want him out, and a lot of people might say, ‘yeah, it’s time for him to move him on’. But there’s ways of doing that and it should suit him as well, how he wants to leave.”

Then came the detail that really stung.

“Not being involved in the squad, not being spoken to, he doesn’t know what’s going on. And yes, I know this – he doesn’t know what is happening,” Wright 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.”

From key figure to expendable asset

Martinelli arrived from Ituano in 2019 as a raw teenager and grew with the club. He has been part of the first-team picture for the entirety of Mikel Arteta’s reign, a popular, high-energy presence and, at times, a symbol of Arsenal’s resurgence.

Now, with the club intent on building from a position of strength after their title win, he looks like one of the first sacrifices.

Arsenal insist this is not a freeze-out. Internally, they point to the depth of the squad and the form of new signing Christos Tzolis, who impressed on the left wing against Coventry in exactly the area Martinelli once called his own.

The club also explored a marquee move for Vinicius Jr earlier in the window before the Brazil star signed a new deal with Real Madrid. That pursuit underlined just how aggressively Arsenal were prepared to upgrade in Martinelli’s zone of the pitch.

For Wright, the hierarchy of those targets matters.

“If you bring Vini in, Martinelli can say to himself, ‘OK, they’ve brought him in, they’ve brought Tzolis in, I might be third [in the pecking order],’” he said. “But if you bring Tzolis in and have [Noni] Madueke on the other side, you’re thinking to yourself, ‘I can still have it with these two, I’ve got something to offer’.

“For him to be nowhere near it, it just makes me feel a bit sad for him.”

A sale waiting to happen

Behind the scenes, the picture is blunt. Arsenal want at least one significant sale before the window closes and have made it clear Martinelli is available.

He is viewed as one of the club’s most valuable tradeable pieces, bracketed alongside Gabriel Jesus and Fabio Vieira as players who could command substantial fees while freeing space in the squad and on the wage bill.

Martinelli has already rejected a move to Galatasaray. If he goes, he wants a top European club, not a step down from the level he believes he has reached at the Emirates.

Arteta, speaking before the Coventry game, did not name names but did not shy away from the reality that established players may have to go.

“It’s a really tough moment, but you need to face that reality,” he said. “You need to face it with real honesty and transparency because when you are on the other side, that’s exactly what you need.

“You might not like what you’ve been told, but if it’s truthful, if it’s the reality, if it’s honest and it’s going to help you to make better decisions and have more clarity for the next steps in your career, you have to do that.

“Everything has a start and has an end. And when it comes to the end, our duty, and our responsibility is to do it in the best possible way, maintaining the respect and admiration for the player and the relationship, but understanding that at the end, we need to make football decisions.”

Respect, reality and the clock ticking

That is the tension at the heart of this saga. Arsenal talk about honesty, clarity and respect. Wright looks at a title-winning winger suddenly nowhere near the matchday squad and sees a player drifting in limbo.

The club want to operate like an elite, ruthless contender. Wright wants them to remember the human cost when a fan favourite, who helped drag them back to the top, is ushered towards the door.

The window is closing. Either the “football decision” arrives with the transparency Arteta promises, or Martinelli’s final chapter in north London risks ending not with applause, but with a silence he never earned.