What's going wrong for Emile Smith Rowe?! Why the out-of-favour Arsenal midfielder's future is far from certain

The Gunners playmaker has barely got a look in under Mikel Arteta since returning from injury in January

Just what is going with Emile Smith Rowe and Arsenal? It’s a question many fans have been asking themselves during the past couple of months, with the club’s No.10 having found himself somewhat out in the cold under Mikel Arteta.

Smith Rowe was Arsenal’s second top scorer last season, finding the net 11 times in all competitions. Only Bukayo Saka (12) scored more and the winger bolstered his tally with two penalties during the closing weeks of the campaign.

Smith Rowe who, along with Saka, had come into the team a year earlier and helped turn around a season that was in danger of complete collapse, looked well set to go on and cement his place in Arteta’s new-look Arsenal this season.

But now he is approaching the summer with growing questions around just where his future could lie.

Getty“In football it’s not about what you’ve done a year or a month ago”

Could a homegrown player, one of Hale End’s poster boys, have to move on to get the sort of game time he needs to continue his development at such a crucial stage of his career? 

A short time ago you would have been accused of being crazy just to suggest it. But now the notion of Smith Rowe leaving Arsenal looks far more plausible.

“He’s pushing,” Arteta said last week when pressed on Smith Rowe’s plight. 

“In football it’s not about what you’ve done a year or a month ago, it’s about what you do now, what you did yesterday and what you’re going to do tomorrow. 

“The player has to have that mindset and the contribution has to be now to the team to make us better and win games.”

Advertisement121 minutes of football since January

Smith Rowe has made just 12 appearances in all competitions this season. Not one of them has been a start.

Yes, he suffered an injury setback in September that saw him have to undergo surgery to fix a long-standing groin issue that had plagued him for almost all of his senior career. But he returned from that lay-off in January.

Since then he has clocked up just 121 minutes of action in eight substitute appearances.

The longest he has been on the pitch in a single game is the 47 minutes he was handed when he replaced the injured Leandro Trossard during the first half of the 3-2 win against Bournemouth.

Arteta has had several opportunities to use the playmaker, but he has opted not to.

There was the 3-0 win at Fulham, a game that would have been perfect to give Smith Rowe some much-needed minutes given the comfortable nature of the scoreline in the second half. Yet he didn’t even come on.

Against Leeds, with Arsenal leading 3-0, Arteta turned to Bukayo Saka after the interval – a player he had left out of the starting XI due to illness and had been unable to train the day before the game.

Surely Smith Rowe would have been a better option given his need for game time?

Getty“He is on the right path”

Smith Rowe didn’t even get on the pitch during the 3-3 draw against Southampton.

With Granit Xhaka absent due to illness, the out-of-form Fabio Vieira got the nod to play in the left-sided No.8 role. Then, with Arsenal 3-1 down and in need of goals, Arteta used five substitutes to try to change the game.

Smith Rowe, a player who scored 11 times last season, was not one of them.

It’s no wonder so many Arsenal fans are confused by the situation.

“There’s a lot of competition now in the team and he needs as well the right moment and the right time in the game to get the opportunity and then he needs to take it,” Arteta said, when asked why Smith Rowe has been struggling for game time.

“I think what he needs is like any player. He needs clarity, he needs to feel loved, to understand where he wants to be and what he needs to do to get there. 

“He is on the right path."

Overlooked for Vieira

The frustrating thing for Smith Rowe is that he is now pain-free for the first time in years.

The operation he had in September has worked perfectly and the groin problem that has been troubling him since his youth days has been cleared up.

So his lack of game time can’t be put down to anything fitness related. He is said to be training well and his data readings are believed to be strong.

Arteta is just choosing not to use him and that could be understandable if all the players ahead of him in the pecking order were performing well. But anyone who has seen Vieira’s performances in recent weeks will know that is not the case.

The Portuguese playmaker is clearly talented and has shown moments of quality during his first season in England.

But those moments have been few and far between, especially in recent weeks when he has really struggled to make any sort of impact when he has been given an opportunity.

Vieira did cost big money last summer, however, so you can perhaps understand why Arteta would be keen to give him as many chances as possible to prove his worth ahead of another summer when the manager will be calling on the owners to free up cash to strengthen the squad.

“It was a difficult match for a lot of players but for Fabio, he hasn’t played enough minutes,” Arteta explained after the former Porto man’s disappointing showing in the 3-3 draw with Southampton.

“He had good periods but the way the game starts as well, instead of going one or two-nil up, and everything goes in your favour, it starts to go in a much more difficult way. That doesn’t help.”