Martin Keown fears Kieran Tierney could become frustrated with… Arsenal because the club is ‘not fully meeting its needs’ in terms of playing time.
Tierney made his fifth start of the season at Arsenal’s Europa League clash with Bodo-Glimt on Thursday evening and impressed for 70 minutes in the 3-0 win.
The Scottish defender has now started both of Arsenal’s European games this season, but has only started three of their eight league appearances and plays back-up to Oleksandr Zinchenko, a £30million summer signing.
Keown rates Tierney highly – calling him a ‘high caliber player’ – but suspects he is becoming frustrated with his playing time at the Emirates Stadium.
“I feel sorry for him,” Keown told BT Sport after Arsenal drove past Bodo-Glimt. “He is a high caliber player and he shows up in every game.
“But you obviously don’t quite meet his needs. It shows you the quality and strength of the squad when it doesn’t start. You want that competition and the level gets higher.
“Whether these players will accept that in the future or not… I don’t know. As long as they play like this when they come in, I think there’s a future for them.’
Keown spoke after Arsenal’s ninth win of the season, enabling the club to equal their best-ever start to the season. The Gunners also won nine of their first 10 games in 1903-04 and 2007-08.
Eddie Nketiah, Rob Holding and Fabio Vieira were on target for the hosts, who now turn their attention to another big Premier League clash as Liverpool travel to the Emirates on Sunday.
‘I am very happy with the victory, six points’ [in the Europa League] and a clean slate,’ said Arteta. “We lacked a bit of connection between the players, we lacked consistency and dominance during the game.
‘There were eight changes, you could feel it, the timing was missing. In the last third we looked very dangerous, the goals we scored were good goals.’
Arsenal will be 14 points clear of Liverpool if they beat Jurgen Klopp’s side this weekend. Liverpool have already dropped 11 points this season and failed to win five of their seven league games.
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