Smith Rowe shines, Nelson unconvincing - How Arsenal changes answered Mikel Arteta call vs Luton

Arsenal's match with Luton was always going to be huge for their squad players. With the season now firmly at its business end, this felt like more or less the only chance Mikel Arteta had to rotate his side for some time.

A strong lineup will be needed at Brighton on Saturday and for both legs against Bayern Munich in the Champions League. Even the game at injury-ravaged Wolves that dissects those two quarter-final matches will be tough.

There are plenty of players who have been lacking in minutes recently for Arsenal. Prior to Wednesday night, Arteta had handed out starts to just 16 players since the winter break, and of that group Emile Smith Rowe and Aaron Ramsdale had been named in the starting XI just once each. There is an argument that this would make it tougher for them to have an impact, but in his pre-match press conference, Arteta seemed to imply this was not an argument he had too much sympathy for.

«When you play you say 'yeah but it’s my first game.' Our obligation and our duty is to be prepared to play any minute in any moment,» he said. «Look at the example of Reiss [Nelson]. His best moment for Arsenal, it's a moment where he played a few minutes and made a huge impact and it's one of the best days in his life as an Arsenal player. Nobody remembers if he started or if it was off the bench.

»There are a lot of examples in world sport where players made the impact. Sometimes you just need a second to change the history of a football club. You don't need 100 minutes to play football."

With that in mind it was a slight surprise to see Arteta make as many as five changes to the side that drew 0-0 with Manchester City on Sunday. For Oleksandr Zinchenko, Leandro Trossard, Thomas Partey, Emile Smith Rowe and Reiss